MATHEW 

SPLENDID 

QUEST 


BASIL MATHEWS 










s 


















THE SPLENDID QUEST 


By 

BASIL MATHEWS 


The Fascinated Child 

A Quest for the Child Spirit and Talks with 
Boys and Girls. 1 2mo, cloth, net . . $ 1 . 00 . 

" A book witn large possibilities for fascination. It 
is a study of the way to appeal to the child’s finest 
nature in order to lead him up to mental and emo- 
tional heights and contains a deal of attractive ma- 
terial to be used in the process, charming stories of 
great people, of nature’s wonders and of fairy lore, 
written by various people who know how to make 
their themes appeal. It should prove a helpful 
guide to the grown-up in leading the young person 
to that most wonderful knowledge of ‘ Jesus our 
Guide, our Hero and our Friend.’ ” — Continent. 


The Splendid truest 

Stories of Knights on the Pilgrim Way. i2mo, 
cloth, net $ i .00. 

The same qualities which made this author’s “ The 
Fascinated Child ” such a fascinating book are 
found here. The Prologue, “ The Pilgrim’s Way,” 
serves as a beautiful background for the life stories 
of famous Knights of the Quest which follow. The 
stories are suitable for children of from eight to 
fifteen. 


THE 


SPLENDID QUEST 

STORIES OF 

KNIGHTS ON THE PILGRIMS IVAY 


BY 

BASIL MATHEWS, M.A. 

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New York Chicago Toronto 

Fleming H. Revell Company 

London and Edinburgh 

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“This sword that I am girt with, said the Damosel, doth me 
great sorrow and cumberance, for I may not be delivered of this 
sword save by a knight, but he must be a passing good man of 
his hands and of his deeds, and without villainy or treachery and 
without treason. And if I may find such a knight that hath all 
these virtues, he may draw this sword out of the sheath. 

“Then King Arthur took the sword by the sheath and by the 
girdle and pulled at it eagerly, but the sword would not out. 
Most of the Knights of the Round Table assayed, but there might 
none speed, wherefore the Damosel made great sorrow out of 
measure. So she took her leave. 

“ A poor Knight, Balin, called unto her and said, Damosel, I 
pray you suffer me as well to assay ; though I be so poorly clothed, 
meseemeth in my heart to speed right well. The Damosel beheld 
the Knight, but because of his poor clothes she thought he should 
be of no worship. Sir, she said, it needeth not to put me to 
more pain or labour. 

“Ah! fair Damosel, said Balin, worthiness, and good qualities, 
and good deeds, are not only in clothes, but manhood and worship 
is hid within man’s person, and many a worshipful knight is not 
known unto all people. 

“Then Balin took the sword and drew it out easily; and when 
he looked on the sword it pleased him much. The King and all 
the Knights had great marvel that Balin had done that adventure. 
Certes, said the Damosel, this is a passing good Knight, and the 
best that ever I found, and most of worship without treason, 
treachery or villainy, and many marvels shall he do.” 

Malory, Le Morte d' Arthur, Bk. II. ch. U. 


PREFACE 


The charm of knights lies partly in the fact 
that they have the spirit of great grown-up 
boys and girls. They are boys because they 
are as careless of danger and as eager for an 
adventure at forty as they are at fourteen. 
They sing of 

", , . the wild joys of living ! The leaping 
From rock up to rock — 

The rending their boughs from the palm-trees, 
The cool silver shock 
Of a plunge in the pool’s living water.** 

Their energy and zest are inexhaustible. The 
oldest and weariest of them leaves the most 
eager of Boy Scouts panting breathlessly 
behind. 

Yet they are also, in a sense, grown-up girls, 
for they healthily let out all the feelings which 
a modern boy is ashamed to own. After a 
lusty fight, in which he has cheerfully taken 
and given a hundred hard blows, a knight will 
weep at the sight of a brother whom he has 

yii 


viii 


PREFACE 


not seen for many months, and will eagerly 
fall on his neck and kiss him. When Arthur’s 
knights went out, a hundred and fifty strong, 
on the splendid quest, the mighty king himself 
“ could not speak for weeping.” 

The knights in this book are just people who 
have carried the boy’s wild joy of living and 
the girl’s sensitiveness into the fighting days 
of manhood. 

Mr. William Watson writes of that world 
“of crimson and of gold,” with 

'*. . . Beauty snatched from ogre’s dungeoned hold. 
Ever the recreant would in dust be rolled, 

Ever the true knight in the joust would win, 

Ever the scaly shape of monstrous Sin 
At last lie vanquished, fold on writhing fold.” 

Mr. Watson, however, wonders whether the 
day of chivalry is dead, and he asks — 

“ Was it all false, that world of princely deeds, 

The splendid quest, the good fight ringing clear? ” 

There have, indeed, always been some 
knights false to the Quest and cowardly in the 
face of adventure. And many pilgrims have 
dropped into a comfortable seat in the inn- 
parlour before their pilgrimage was well begun. 
But the Quest still shines, high and unsullied. 


PREFACE 


ix 


The great adventure is to follow that Quest. 
And there are as many adventures for the boy 
or girl or grown-up to-day as ever there were 
in “the forest of adventure ” itself. 

Adventures are to the venturesome. This 
is as true to-day as it was a thousand years ago. 
All the knights and pilgrims in this book had 
real adventures, though some never touched a 
sword, and others died only yesterday. The 
reason why so few of us achieve them is that 
the first hard knock sends us home whimpering. 
The heroes of these stories had exciting ad- 
ventures because, when they started on their 
quest, they took all the risks and hazards. 

The greatest of our school songs declares 
that there are still 

“Fights for the fearless, 

And goals for the eager.” 

This book salutes that fearless and eager young 
chivalry of to-day, the Table Round of the 
Twentieth Century. Then — out swords for 

“ The splendid quest, the good fight ringing clear ! ” 

No Quest, no Adventured No Quest, no 
Conquest 1 



CONTENTS 


Prologue 

PAGE 

.. On the Pilgrims’ Way. 13 

I 


The Knight of the Quest 

. . Sir Galahad 26 

II 


A Twelve- Year-Old Knight 

. . .King Louis of Franc*?. 35 

III 


The Man with an Axe 

. . Abraham Lincoln .... 48 

IV 


The Knight of His Sister 

..Charles Lamb 60 

V 


The Maiden Knight of Voices. . . 

. . Joan of Arc 68 

VI 


The Hidden Pilgrims 

. . Knights Unnamed 

and Unknown 79 

VII 


The Daring Fisherman 

. . Simon Peter 87 

VIII 



Our Lady of Dingy Streets 


Sister Dora 


ioo 


xii CONTENTS 

IX 

The Greatheart or Papua James Chalmers no 

X 

The Man in a Coracle Columba 123 

XI 

‘Steel True and Blade Straight". . . Louisa Alcott 138 


St. Paul 153 

The Hero of Heroes. 179 


The Adventures of St. Paul. 
The Splendid Conquest 


THE SPLENDID QUEST 

PROLOGUE 

ON THE PILGRIMS* WAY 

It was the high noon of dog-roses when 
Ernest and I looked out across the narrow 
valley to the spur of the Pilgrims’ Way. A 
waft of the scent of sweet-briar marks the hour 
when he asked, “ What is that curly white path 
that wiggles up the hill ? ” Behind us the copse 
of larches lifted a thousand lances to the sky. 
The wind galloped over the hill from the south- 
west, sweeping across the thirty miles of the 
Weald that spreads between us and the sea. 

We were standing in my front garden, look- 
ing over its low shrubs across the narrow 
Holmesdale that makes a cradle for Reigate. 
On the other side of the valley rose the steep 
chalk-downs. They rose sheer out of the 
smoke that swept towards Kent across the 
huddled old roofs of the town. They rose so 
high that we could see the beech trees on the 
top tangling their branches in the woolly clouds 
13 


14 


THE SPLENDID QUEST 


that hurried along the ridge. A white curving 
ribbon swept upward from the town to the crest 
of the hills in such a taking wave that our eyes 
could not choose but follow. This was Ernest’s 
“ curly white path.” 

“ That,” I said, “is the Pilgrims’ Way, and 
it runs right along the top of the hills.” 

“What?” asked Ernest, “is the Pilgrims’ 
Way, and why is it at the top of the hill ? ” 

Ernest is good at questions. The tops of 
trees fascinate him. When he has climbed and 
climbed, till he stands on the very last creaking 
fork that will bear him, he is happy : the wider 
view answers so many questions. But he is 
restless again; for it suggests more new prob- 
lems. He cranes his neck for a view of the 
farthest hills — or a still higher tree. He always 
aches to know what is round the next corner or 
over the last ridge. 

Now he wanted to know what is a Pilgrim and 
why he has a Way and why the Way is on the 
top of the hill instead of in the valley? 

“What do you say to walking across and 
seeing for ourselves ? ” I asked. 

In a flash he was gone and emerged a minute 
later, his pockets bulging with apples, and in 
his hand one of the armful of Papuan spears 
that we keep in the umbrella-stand. 


PROLOGUE 


15 


“Once upon a time/’ I said, as we swung 
down the hill and through the old town, “ when 
the Ancient Briton fought wolves and men with 
bows and arrows, bronze hatchets and spears, 
he found that he could see his enemy (the other 
Britons) much better if he walked on the ridge 
of the hills. This valley was very marshy and 
full of tangled bushes. There were no hedges, 
no fields, no ditches — no trespassing ! ” 

Ernest’s twelve-year-old Ancient British 
heart stirred him to a wild whoop and the 
shaking of his spear at the joy of such a life. 
This startled an Ancient Flemish horse in a 
brewer’s dray, and I hastily drew Ernest into 
Slipshoe Street, where he would do less 
damage. 

“Is it Slipshoe Street,” asked Ernest, “be- 
cause it is steep and chalky up the hill and 
when it is wet your shoe slips ? ” 

It is so rare for him to suggest probable 
answers to his own questions that I hailed this 
daring and original theory as certainly the right 
one. We proceeded under the overhanging 
eaves of the old timbered houses and climbed 
the hill; the Papuan spear being used as an 
Alpenstock — or a Pilgrim’s Staff. 

The walking was too steep for further talk 
even before we came to the White Way itself. 


16 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


There we fell, like Christian in The Pilgrim's 
Progress , from running to walking, and from 
walking to clambering on hands and knees. 
Ernest, with the little breath that remained in 
his body, said that the great, soft, greyish, 
rounded slopes looked like a giant watch-dog 
lying down, and it made him want a giant hand 
with which to pat it. 

When we had toiled almost to the top we 
threw ourselves on the ground. It was great 
gain to get Ernest to a point where he was 
really glad to lie down and rest. We lay on 
our backs and, looking upward, watched the 
great, high “ pillowy billowy ” clouds roll across 
their sea of blue, while skirmishing wisps of 
torn clouds scudded in shreds before the lower 
breeze which swept through the beeches behind 
us. We lifted our heads and looked south- 
west across the great Weald of Sussex to the 
drop in the South Downs where Chanctonbury 
Ring stood out some thirty-five miles away. 
We turned west, looking across Surrey to the 
mighty Leith Hill which couched like a lion 
on the spring, sniffing the air as it came up from 
the Channel. 

We turned over and face downward revelled 
in the miracle of tousled grass. It sparkled 
with the dainty yellow of hop-trefoil; it was 


PROLOGUE 


17 


dotted with daisies, Speedwell and the brilliant 
scarlet Pimpernel. Lazily Ernest turned and, 
putting his head into a fragrant pillow of wild 
thyme, said comfortably, with one hand on his 
trusty spear — 

“Now — about the Pilgrims’ Way/’ 

“ That Ancient Briton,” I said, “walked, with 
his spear, on the top of the hills so that he 
might see his enemy and have the advantage 
of fighting from above, while keeping out of 
the marshes and tangled brushwood. He crept 
along the crest of these great chalk downs and 
made those tracks along the hills that have been 
followed by men in the thousands of years ever 
since. 

“ One day as the Britons of Surrey were on 
their hills they saw the glint of shields and 
shining helmets such as had never been worn 
in these islands before. The soldiers who wore 
them came marching up the hill, and the Britons 
hurled their spears down as they had always 
done. But the sturdy men-at-arms who came 
steadily up the hill had locked their shields 
together in one flat roof over their heads. The 
regiment looked like a great tortoise crawling 
up the hill under a monstrous shell. On the 
shell the British spears rained harmlessly. 
Above it stood the brazen standard of the 


18 


THE SPLENDID QUEST 


eagle. There was something awful and irre- 
sistible in the uncanny steady advance of the 
hidden force of men. And the Britons broke 
and fled. 

“ So the Roman men-at-arms conquered. 
And along this ridge they marched with steady 
tramp, scorning the round encampments of the 
Britons (which you can still see on some of 
these heights), and throwing up great dykes 
and square camps of their own. These Romans 
began to drain and clear the marshes in the 
valley and threw great roads as straight as a 
strung bow-line across the Weald. But still 
their helmets gleamed on this high chalk Way 
that was old even when they came and ran from 
the far-off port of Southampton through Hamp- 
shire and Berkshire and Surrey into the heart 
of Kent. 

“From their far-away home across Europe 
the call came to the Romans to return to Italy 
and fight for their own land. But even before 
they went, yellow-haired, blue-eyed, sturdy sea- 
fighters had landed in England, so that when 
the Britons crept back on to the top of this 
chalk hill to look over the great valley, they 
found behind them a new enemy that came 
charging down from London, with hair flying 
in the wind. The Saxons, with wild barbaric 


PROLOGUE 


19 


shouts, drove the Britons over the hill and into 
the valley. To the Saxons these mighty hills 
became a gigantic rampart whence they could 
repulse enemies. Along these hills they 
galloped with their horses.” 

As I said this, we heard the thud of hoofs 
on the Way among the Birches and caught a 
glimpse of a flying white mane and tail. Ernest 
sat up and lifted his spear as a horse bearing a 
young farmer went thundering by, a flashing 
gleam of whiteness on the grey-green face of 
the rounded hill. 

From a curve in the downs there came the 
sound of bleating. Slowly the sound drew 
nearer and the white sheep, nibbling the young 
grass and bleating to their fast-growing lambs, 
threw a sidelong look at us as they trotted 
on again. They passed us with the muffled 
sound of a thousand cloven feet. It was a 
whispering roar — as of thunder heard distantly 
across a beech forest. Behind them strode the 
shepherd, bearing a long crook in his hand and 
wearing a buff smock-frock. His hair was fair, 
and as he glanced at us the eyes of a Saxon 
looked out. 

“They came along the Way,” I whispered 
to Ernest, “like the horseman and this shep- 
herd exactly a thousand years ago. The sheep, 


20 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


the men and the horses are jthe same now as 
they were then.” 

“Ah,” he said, shaking his spear, “I knew 
just what an Ancient Briton felt like when the 
Saxon on his horse came tearing by.” And as 
he spoke Ernest tugged from the grass where 
he had been digging with his fingers an arrow- 
headed flint, left on the Way by the men who 
hunted there even before the Britons. 

“ Yes,” I said, “you felt like that. But even 
the Saxons were driven across these hills by 
still fiercer Danes with mighty battle-axes that 
clove through helmet and skull. Then came 
across the Channel a craftier and more awful 
foe, William the Norman and his followers in 
mail and with sword and axe. And the Saxon 
was set to feed his master’s sheep — like the 
Saxon who has just passed by — to build his 
master’s castle like the one which used to 
stand on the woody mound down there in the 
valley.” 

Ernest lifted his head from its pillow of 
thyme to look down into Reigate where some 
of the stones of the ancient castle have been 
built into a newer tower-gate. 

“The Castle has gone,” I said, “but the 
Pilgrims’ Way remains. It is about time we 
came to the ‘ pilgrims/ ” 


PROLOGUE 


21 


Ernest, whose bright teeth were crunching an 
apple, nodded agreement. 

“Well, seven hundred years ago in Canter- 
bury, which lies right along at the end of these 
hills over there in the east, Thomas a Becket 
was killed before the altar in the great church 
by the fierce knights of Henry. His brave 
death while defending his own church, unarmed 
but unafraid, made good men all over Europe 
feel that he was a real hero, a Knight of the 
Cross — so he was made a saint. 

“ People came from many lands to visit his 
tomb at Canterbury and to pray there for such 
a brave, hardy spirit as his. These were the 
pilgrims. Some walked on foot and some 
came on horseback; some came from the 
counties of England, and many crossed from 
the countries of Europe. Often those from 
Europe came hundreds of miles up from the 
West Country and from Southampton. The 
roads in the valleys were often mere quagmires 
of mud, but on the tops of the hills the road 
was generally dry, while the springy turf cooled 
the pilgrims’ sandalled feet So this ancient 
track on the chalk hills came to be called the 
Pilgrims’ Way. 

“ The brown-robed pilgrim strode along, with 
his long gown tucked up under the rope that 


22 


THE SPLENDID QUEST 


was tied round his waist. This gave freer 
movement to his tanned legs and feet as he 
swung along the crest of the hills, the dew on 
the bracken cooling his ankles. He would nod 
and call a greeting to the shepherd-boy who 
lay whistling on the mound under which was 
buried some chief. 

“ Behind the pilgrim there would sound the 
quick thud of a prancing horse. Turning to 
look back, the wanderer would see a Knight 
whose sword swung in its scabbard on the 
horse’s side, while a Cross was blazoned on his 
shield which bore the dints of many shrewd 
sword strokes. The Knight’s horse was a fine 
tall black creature, with tossing mane, and the 
contrast was almost comical when he caught 
up the broad-backed, stout-legged nag of a 
vigorous miller, whose wife had dusted the last 
fleck of flour from his grey jerkin. 

“ Lingering behind these came a poor Oxford 
scholar on a sorry, raw-boned horse which 
caught a snatch of grass here and there as its 
absent-minded rider rode on, with his thoughts 
deep in a black-letter book. But, however 
much the student seemed to be taken up with 
his reading, when he had a mind, nobody could 
play off more mischievous tricks on fellow- 
travellers. And the miller would look sus- 


PROLOGUE 


23 


piciously at him out of the corner of his eye, 
to see whether any pranks were being prepared. 

“A lusty song filled the air; and the pil- 
grims were joined by the vigorous twenty-year- 
old son of a country squire. When he stopped 
carolling, this strapping young wanderer would 
tell his fellow-travellers of wonderful voyages 
in France and Holland. But his boasting 
quieted down when the party of pilgrims was 
joined by a demure Prioress who was accom- 
panied by a nun. The Prioress was dignified 
yet made good cheer with the others, while 
alongside rode a Monk on a horse as strong 
and lively as that of the Knight himself. 

“ So, on just such a day as this — a day of 
sun and wind and cloud — the Knight and 
Miller, the Student and Baker, the Friar and 
the Carpenter wandered along this high Pil- 
grims’ Way with their faces turned east. Every 
man of them rode or strode with a quest in view. 
Each was spurred along by some aim. The 
desire of one was for healing; another wished 
to shine in the eyes of his neighbours. Some 
came for the sheer joy of the journey. Many 
came for all these reasons together. But 
always there was before them the thought of 
the hero, Thomas a Becket, who had quite 
willingly died rather than give up his Faith. 


24 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


“As they trudged over those hills to the 
east away into Kent, and at last came in sight 
of the great square towers of Canterbury, the 
pilgrims seemed to have reached the City of 
their Quest. The sun would be setting behind 
them in the north-west sky, and — as it length- 
ened out their own shadows as they stood on 
the shoulder of the last hill — its light would 
glow on the towers and pinnacles and gleam- 
ing windows of the great cathedral, till it 
seemed the dazzling centre of a Golden City. 

“ Their chatter would cease. A strange awe 
and silence would come on the pilgrims as, 
with tired feet, they walked through the narrow, 
winding, cobbled alleys of Canterbury and into 
the great cathedral church. There they knelt 
by the tomb of Thomas, the Hero. Out of the 
glimmering twilight of that mighty aisle there 
looked out, from niche and column and win- 
dow, the gathered heroes and heroines who 
had achieved their Quest; from Peter, the 
daring fisherman of Galilee, and Paul, the 
adventurous sailor of the Mediterranean, down 
to Bertha, the Lady of Gaul, who sailed across 
the Channel to bring her Faith to the people 
of Kent. 

“As Knight and Carpenter, Prior and 
Ploughman knelt there side by side, they, with 


PROLOGUE 


25 


all the host of those heroic men and women, 
looked beyond the tomb of Thomas to the 
glorious and radiant Hero and King. The 
Pilgrims’ Way had led to Him. Jesus had 
made His own heroic Pilgrims’ Way up a Hill 
to a Cross. He had achieved the Splendid 
Quest. And it was in the wake of His con- 
quest that every pilgrim and hero and saint 
had striven along the Way.” 

As I stopped speaking, Ernest lifted his 
head. 

“ Did those knights and pilgrims have 
adventures ? ” he asked. 

“ Always,” I replied. “If you are a real 
knight or pilgrim you cannot help having 
adventures.” 

“ I would like to hear about them,” he said. 
“ But I would like better still to have adven- 
tures myself.” 

So the stories in this book .came to be told. 


X 

THE KNIGHT OF THE QUEST 

In a great hall, more than fifteen hundred 
years ago, all the knights who served King 
Arthur were sitting down to dinner. Suddenly 
the clatter of horse’s hoofs sounded in the 
cobbled courtyard. The great door was flung 
open, and a fair gentlewoman, on a horse that 
breathed hard and was covered with sweat, rode 
straight into the hall. She got off the horse’s 
back, walked to the head of the table, where 
King Arthur sat by the side of Queen Guene- 
vere, and curtsied to him. 

“ Damsel, God bless thee,” said King Arthur. 

“ Sir,” she replied, “ will you tell me where 
Sir Launcelot is? ” 

King Arthur pointed to the splendid knight 
and said, “Yonder, you see him.” 

Then the maiden went up to Launcelot and 
asked him to ride with her into the forest. Now 
it was the rule of every good knight that when- 
ever any woman needed his help he should go 
26 


THE KNIGHT OF THE QUEST 27 


at once and do everything that he could do for 
her. The dinner, which was a high feast, was 
just being brought in; and Launcelot, who was 
always riding in the open air, was very hungry. 
Nor could he find out why the damsel wanted 
him to ride into the forest. He did not even 
know her name. But he stood up at once and 
said smilingly — 

“ I will gladly go with you.” Then turning 
to his man he said, “Go, saddle my horse 
and bring me my sword and helmet and 
shield.” 

The damsel and the knight rode together 
through the forest of adventure. It was spring- 
time, and the sun shone brightly through the 
new red leaves of the oak trees and glanced 
through the dancing twigs of the silver birch. 
Launcelot, sitting erect on his sturdy brown 
horse and looking broad and strong in his fine 
armour, was like a great sinewy oak, while the 
slender damsel, on her prancing palfrey and 
clad in silvery grey, was like the silver birch — 
the Lady of the Forest. 

They rode into a great valley, where they 
came to an abbey. Twelve nuns in this abbey 
came to Launcelot, leading to him a fine, strong 
young man, whose body was so perfect and 
jvhose face was so handsome that one could not 


28 


THE SPLENDID QUEST 


find his match in the world. The nuns said to 
Sir Launcelot — 

“ Sir, we bring you here this child whom we 
have fed and taught, and we pray you to make 
him a knight . 55 

When Sir Launcelot found that the young 
man — whose name was Galahad — also wished 
it, he made him a knight, saying to him — 

“ God make you as good as you are 
beautiful . 55 

When Launcelot returned to King Arthur 
next day and they were going to sit down to 
dinner, a young man rushed up to the King and 
said — 

“ Sir, there is beneath at the river a great 
stone above the water, and therein I saw 
sticking a sword . 55 

The King and his knights hurried down to 
the river. There they saw the sword in the 
stone, and on the hilt, in letters of jewels and 
gold, were these words — 

‘‘Never shall man take me hence, but only he 
by whose side I ought to hang, and he shall be 
the best knight of the world.” 

Many knights tried to drag the sword from 
the stone, but they could not move it at all, and 
when they were tired of trying they went back 
to their dinner. While they were feeding, 


THE KNIGHT OF THE QUEST 29 


young Galahad was led in by an old man, who 
took him to the seat at the table called 
“ Perilous.” Sir Galahad was the first man 
who ever dared to sit there, for it was kept for 
the best knight in the world. And the other 
knights wondered at this, because Sir Galahad 
was so young. 

After dinner they went down to the river 
again, taking the Queen and the ladies to see 
the sword in the stone. And young Galahad, 
who had a scabbard but no sword, put out his 
hand and drew the sword from the stone quite 
easily. 

His strength was as the strength of ten. 

Because his heart was pure. 

Then the King took them all to a field where 
they jousted, taking spears and charging at one 
another. Galahad threw one knight after an- 
other from horseback. After this they all went 
back to Camelot to supper. It was a feast on 
the four hundred and fifty-fourth anniversary of 
that day when the Holy Spirit of God came 
upon Peter and John and the other Apostles as 
they sat at supper in Jerusalem. And after the 
knights had been to evensong in the great 
church, they began their meal. Then there 
suddenly came a crash of thunder and a flashing 


30 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


beam of light, seven times brighter than a sun- 
beam at mid-day. 

In the shining of this wonderful light the 
knights looked at each other and it seemed to 
each of them that his friends looked more 
splendid and strong than they had ever looked 
before. And every knight found on the table 
in front of him the food which he enjoyed most 
of all in the whole world. But they soon stopped 
eating and looking at one another ; for they saw, 
carried into the hall by invisible hands and 
covered with a fair white cloth of samite, the 
Holy Grail, a Cup in which was the blood of 
Jesus Christ, which He shed when He suffered 
— as the first and perfect Knight and King — 
for those who were not so strong as He. 

No man in the great Hall, however, could 
see the Cup itself because, as I say, it was 
hidden by a lovely cloth. And it was said that 
the Cup would always remain invisible except 
to the absolutely pure in heart. 

Sir Gawaine, who was one of the mightiest 
knights at the Table of King Arthur, was so 
stirred by the Vision that he stood up there and 
then and vowed that he would go in quest of the 
Holy Grail. So stirred were the other knights 
of King Arthur’s Table Round that one hun- 
dred and fifty of them rose up and vowed 


THE KNIGHT OF THE QUEST 31 


the same vow to go in quest of the Holy 
Grail, and to see the Cup itself. 

An old Hermit, named Nacien, warned them 
that no man who did not live a clean life would 
ever achieve this adventure. But King Arthur 
grieved terribly, because he knew that if one 
hundred and fifty of his men went forth in this 
Quest his wonderful fellowship of the Round 
Table Knights would be broken up for ever. 
He loved to have his sturdy knights around 
him and to see them go out one by one to rescue 
distressed damsels or slay some terrible dragon. 
But never before had so many knights gone out 
on so hard an adventure. So when they all 
rode out through the streets of Camelot the 
people wept and “the King turned away and 
could not speak for weeping.” 

Now Galahad, who went out with them on 
the Quest, held in his hand his lance and at his 
side hung his wonderful spear; but he had no 
shield. After four days he came to a White 
Abbey and in it hung a shield as white as snow 
with a red cross in the middle. This shield 
could only be carried and used by the best 
knight in the world. A mysterious White 
Knight who had wounded many who came 
in quest of the shield gave it to Galahad, say- 
ing that it was meant for him and him alone. 


32 THE SPLENDID QUEST 

After some stirring fights there came to Sir 
Galahad this splendid adventure. In an old 
and desolate chapel on a lonely mountain he 
went quietly to pray, to ask God to give him 
sound wisdom. And a voice said to him — 

“Go thou now, thou adventurous knight, to 
the Castle of Maidens, and there do away 
the wicked customs.” 

Galahad knew that this was a cursed castle 
in which much abominable mischief was done. 
It stood in the valley, by the Severn, and it had 
deep ditches round three sides. An old man 
met Sir Galahad, then seven fair maidens, and 
, lastly a knight’s attendant. They all warned 
him that he would meet with nothing but death 
at the castle. 

Sure enough, seven knights rode out from the 
Castle of Maidens and set on Galahad all to- 
gether. He smote the first to the ground with 
his lance, while the spears of the others broke 
on Galahad’s white shield.. Galahad then let 
drive at them all with his sword with such fury 
that they fled, while he chased them into the 
castle and out again. An old man met him 
with the keys of the castle, and Galahad then 
set free the prisoners and stopped the wicked 
customs which those seven knights had set up 
in the Castle of Maidens. 


THE KNIGHT OF THE QUEST 38 


Sir Galahad went on from one great adven- 
ture to another. He rescued distressed maidens 
from cruel knights. He defended holy men 
and destroyed wicked customs. His spear and 
sword and shield were always used on the side 
of pure life and good fellowship. He never 
boasted, yet he was the bravest of all knights. 
Some other knights who were good and brave 
also did these things. But although they — 
like Sir Galahad — went out in quest of the 
Holy Cup, and although they too desired to 
look on the face of Jesus Himself and learn 
to give oneself for others, yet they could not 
achieve this greatest of all adventures. They 
knew that to see His Face and follow Him is 
the most splendid quest in the world, and the 
greatest adventure. For the desire for that 
Vision would lead them, as it must lead any of 
us, to give up easy slackness and go out into 
the world, often poor, always with eager faces, 
to see and to serve men in Britain, or in far and 
wonderful lands, or even in the Islands of the 
Sea. 

Those knights never saw the Vision. But 
Galahad did. For he was thrown into prison 
in a deep hole by a great king, who, when he 
came to die, was sorry that he had put Galahad 
into a dungeon. So he sent for him and asked 
c 


34 


THE SPLENDID QUEST 


forgiveness, which Galahad gladly gave. When 
the king died the people of the city chose 
Galahad king by the assent of them all. 

When Galahad had worn the crown for 
exactly a year he rose up early in the morning 
to pray, and a Man said to him — 

“Come forth, thou servant of Jesus Christ, 
and thou shalt see what thou hast much desired 
to see.” 

Sir Galahad then saw the Vision of the Holy 
Grail, the radiant Cup holding the blood which 
Jesus shed when He gave His life as a perfect 
Knight in order to save all His people. And 
the brave knight cried out — 

“ Lord, I thank Thee, for now I see that that 
hath been my desire for many a day.” 

And the Man said to Sir Galahad, “The 
Vision has come to you above the other Knights 
of the Table Round, because you are brave and 
strong and gentle ; but most of all because you 
have always been pure and clean in your heart 
and life/* 


II 

A TWELVE-YEAR-OLD KNIGHT; 

I 

" I will' race you to the end of the corridor,” 
cried young Louis to his brothers, Robert, 
Alphonso and Philip. “ You can start from 
that pillar, Philip, because you are the 
youngest.” 

So with shouts of laughter and excitement 
the little princes rushed down the great stone 
corridors of Poissy Castle. Out of breath they 
slowly climbed the round stair up to the battle- 
ments where the sentries looked out across 
the river and over the green valley. Louis 
carried with him a favourite puppy, with which 
they romped on the wall before clambering 
down the stair again to go and visit the fierce- 
looking falcons that stood pruning themselves 
on their perches in the royal stables. 

Louis was twelve years old, a jolly, laughing 
boy, who yet loved to go into the solemn still- 
ness of the castle chapel and kneel there in 
prayer. It was the year 1226. When November 
c 2 35 


36 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


came, Louis and his brothers with their sister 
Isabella were in Paris with their mother 
Blanche. 

One day they all started out along the muddy 
roads in their heavy coach to meet their father, 
Louis VIII, King of France. As they rolled 
and rocked along, mists rose from the fields 
along the way, and the children laughed as 
now and again red leaves were blown in on 
to their laps by the gusty autumn wind. But 
their laughter stopped as they saw another 
coach coming to meet them. A great bishop 
got out of the coach, and coming to the Queen- 
mother with a very sad face, he saluted young 
Louis as King, and told the children that their 
father had just died. 

Little Louis hardly understood what it all 
meant, even when he saw his mother — who 
was usually rather stern and very strong — with 
her head in her hands, weeping. But he bravely 
tried from the very first day to be a real king. 
Before they crowned him as king, however, he 
was made a knight. Early on the morning when 
he was to be knighted, he was awakened and 
led to a bath. 

“ A knight,” they said, “must bathe himself in 
honour and courtesy and virtue.” 

Then he was taken to a great bed on which 


A TWELVE-YEAR-OLD KNIGHT 37 


he lay to show that, to the knight who really 
fought well and lived purely, there came at 
last the time to rest. 

Again twelve-year-old Louis rose from the 
bed, and they put on him a snow-white shirt to 
show that a knight must keep his body pure 
if he is to win in battle and do great deeds. 
Over the shirt a crimson robe was placed to 
tell that, if need be, a knight must pour out 
his blood “ to serve and honour God.” Long 
trunk hose of a deep brown were drawn on to 
his legs to speak of the earth whence he came 
and whither he would go. 

A beautiful white girdle was put around him 
to teach again the purity and self-denial which 
he must practise. And on his heels were placed 
two golden spurs. One spur reminded him that 
he must be speedy and keen in the service 
of others, while the other spur spoke of the 
obedience he must give to the will of his God. 
A spotless white coif was then placed on Louis’ 
head to show what a stainless soul the gallant 
and true knight should always have. 

Dressed in this way Louis, who was now 
full of desire to be a valiant young knight, 
went into the church at Soissons. Being clothed 
in beautiful new armour — his shield upon his 
arm, his cuirass on his breast, his steel gloves 


38 


THE SPLENDID QUEST 


and gauntlets on his hands and wrists — he 
knelt there to pray. 

Then there was brought to him a shining, 
naked sword. And he heard these words 
spoken as the sword was put into his hands. 

“ Receive this blade in the name of the 
Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and use 
it in defence of yourself and of Holy Church, 
for the confusion of Christ’s foes and for the 
Christian faith, and let it wound no man 
unjustly.” 

The old man who repeated these words then 
stooped down and kissed young Louis on the 
forehead with the kiss of peace. Then he 
touched the kneeling boy’s right shoulder with 
a sword. So Louis rose from his knees, a 
knight of twelve years old. 

The very next day he was crowned King of 
France in the great cathedral at Rheims. This 
boy of twelve was led barefoot to the altar on 
that misty November day. There he promised 
faithfully that he would do good justice to his 
people. Walter, the Archbishop of Sens, 
handed to Louis the sword of justice. Then 
he put in his right hand the royal sceptre and 
in his left a small rod with the ivory hand 
of mercy and justice upon it. Last of all the 
Archbishop took the glittering crown from the 


A TWELVE-YEAR-OLD KNIGHT 39 


altar and placed it upon Louis’ fair boyish 
curls. 

Few boys in the world have ever taken on 
their twelve-year-old shoulders such a load in 
one day. The great barons and knights of 
France were quarrelling — like brothers — 
among themselves. They would only unite in 
order to fight against their King. But Louis had 
a strong, clever mother who took more of the 
burden from his shoulders than he ever knew. 
She gathered trusted friends who were brave 
and skilful to help her and Louis to govern. 

Often young King Louis was beaten by his 
tutor, who seemed to think that one caning 
every day was good for a boy whether he had 
done anything wrong or not. Perhaps it was 
specially good for a boy-king whom many 
courtiers tried to spoil in order to become his 
favourites. Being king and knight and 
student m&de him serious as a rule. But people 
all through his life loved to hear Louis laugh. 
And he even chuckled at jokes against him- 
self. While a boy he also had many happy 
walks along the banks of the river Seine, 
chasing squirrels under the spreading trees of 
the great woods. Sometimes he would specially 
enjoy going in a boat right out on the broad, 
rolling river itself. 


40 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


ii 

Louis was now growing tall and slender, and 
looked a fine young knight, with his graceful 
body, his light hair and blue “ dove’s eyes.” 
He was so winning that other young fellows 
loved to be near him. A great friend who saw 
Louis riding out to battle on a splendid horse, 
with trumpets sounding, bearing on his fair 
hair a helmet of steel and in his hand a great 
two-handed sword, said that he was “ the finest 
knight that ever was seen.” 

In the great hall of his castle in the evening 
the yellow, smoky light of torches and the 
leaping flames of the great log fire threw 
strange moving shadows on the tapestry of the 
walls. Louis, at once Knight and King, sat 
there in the hall listening to the marvellous 
stories, which the old warriors told, of how 
Richard the Lion-hearted of England, astride 
a mighty charger, swung his battle-axe and led 
his men in the struggle to recover the Holy 
Land. Louis’ heart was strangely stirred by 
these stories, told by knights who carried the 
cross on their armour as a sign that they were 
Crusaders, and who showed on their tanned 
and swarthy faces dark scars carved by the 
shining scimitars of Saladin. 


A TWELVE-YEAR-OLD KNIGHT 41 


He was so stirred that he determined to lead 
a Crusade himself. There was a great stir of 
preparation. The smiths banged on their 
anvils to make new armour, while horses were 
shod and saddled to go on the long journey. 
As the knights bade farewell on leaving for 
“the glorious tourney beyond the seas,” they 
begged the ladies whom they loved to forgive 
them for going. And each lady answered — 

“ Since you would go to serve God, I would 
not have you remain at home for me. With 
clasped hands I pray instead that He will give 
you life and good deeds.” 

The knights started on their long journey, 
joined along the roads by bands of Crusaders, 
while the women could not forbear to weep. 
Then Louis, kneeling in the Abbey of St. 
Denis by the tombs of his father and his grand- 
father, took the pilgrim’s scarf and staff and 
walked back to Paris barefoot. 

His mother Blanche was a brave woman. 
Some thought that she was hard. But when she 
said good-bye to Louis she wept and even 
fainted. 

“Fair son,” she cried, “how can my heart 
bear this farewell to you? Far rather had I 
been cut in twain than this, for certainly you 
have been the best son to me that ever mother 


42 


THE SPLENDID QUEST 


bore. Fair ,son; fair, dear, tender son, my 
heart knows well that I shall never see you 
more.” 

Then King Louis, all in shining armour, 
threw himself on his great horse, and amid the 
shouts of his people and the sound of trum- 
pets, the fluttering of banners and the gleam of 
a thousand lances, rode out of sight of the 
straining eyes of his mother. 

With those knights and their soldiers Louis 
rode through the orchards and vineyards of 
France down to the sea. At Marseilles “all 
the King’s horses and all the King’s men” 
went aboard the scores of ships that lay waiting 
in the harbour. When all the pulling and 
shouting and confusion were over and every 
one was safely on board, the anchors were 
weighed and they made sail across the Mediter- 
ranean. “And in a little time,” wrote a man 
who was there, “the wind caught the sails and 
carried us out of sight of land, so that we saw 
naught around us but the sky and water, and 
every day the wind carried us away from the 
land where we were born.” 

At last they came in sight of a long, low, 
sandy shore, the coast of Africa — the land of 
Egypt. The ships let down their boats in 
order to land. Louis was the first to leap from 


A TWELVE-YEAR-OLD KNIGHT 43 


his boat into the water when it was still breast- 
deep, in order to be in the front of the charge 
on the enemy. And when his enemies, the 
dark Bedouin, black Nubian and the swarthy 
Saracens shook their dripping swords and 
spears over his head, threatening him with 
death, he was calm and unmoved. 

Suddenly there was a loud explosion. The 
Crusaders saw in the air, sweeping towards 
them, “ a tail of fire, big as a barrel of vinegar, 
long as a great lance, like a dragon flying in 
the air.” 

“ The Greek fire ! ” shouted the soldiers in 
alarm. For it was that wonderful and deadly 
fire by which the Saracens swept such destruc- 
tion among the European soldiers and burned 
down many castles. King Louis and his 
soldiers fought on, and sometimes they won, 
but often they were defeated. For many 
knights deserted Louis and returned home, 
while others in mad deeds of courage left gaps 
in the defences through which the Saracens 
could pour themselves. At last the King saw 
that he could not win back the Holy Land, so 
he returned to France. 

“And everywhere 

The knights come back from their great quest in vain. 
In vain they struggle for the vision fair.” 


44 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


hi 

In his defeat, however, Louis had learned 
how to strive for and win a more splendid 
quest than the retaking of Jerusalem. It was 
the quest of making a more glorious and happy 
country at home. On his return to Paris bon- 
fires blazed and bells rang wildly with joy as 
the King rode through its cobbled streets once 
more. You would not say that his life was so 
exciting in France as it had been on the 
Crusade. Yet his work at home was so wonder- 
ful in its quiet power that Louis in the next 
sixteen years made France the happiest and 
strongest nation in Europe. 

This was his way of spending his days. He 
did not like the fuss of many valets to dress 
him, as most kings did. But early in the morn- 
ing he would leap from his bed, slip on ec a coat 
of camlet, a stuff surcoat without sleeves, a scarf 
of black taffeta on his shoulders, and a cap with 
a white peacock’s feather on his well-combed 
hair,” and go down to kneel in prayer in the 
royal chapel. Many of the other men would 
follow in tunics of purple or scarlet, shining 
belts, with long hose on their legs and long- 
pointed shoes on their feet. From chapel he 
went to the gates to give food and money to 


A TWELVE- YEAR-OLD KNIGHT 45 


the poor who came together there. After break- 
fast he often went to his justice court; or, out 
in the open air, under a great spreading oak 
tree on the grass with his courtiers around, he 
listened while his officers did justice, sometimes 
stopping them and altering their judgments. 
He would often make laws to protect the poor 
people from rough knights and barons. 

At dinner again, instead of keeping poorer 
people at a great distance he always invited 
some who were miserable and poor, blind and 
often dirty, to sit at his own table, where he 
would feed them with his own hands. Often 
he would carry dishes from the kitchen window 
to the poor people, holding the dishes in his 
hat when they were too hot. Sometimes he 
spilt the gravy into his hat ! 

In the afternoon he would often find time to 
play with his children, or with them walk 
through the woods and watch the boats on the 
dancing water of the Seine. At supper the 
knights would draw the heavy table near to the 
blazing wood fire, and when they had finished 
eating, would sit there telling tales till it was 
time for prayers and bed. Louis would laugh 
joyously at good jokes; but the jokes must 
be clean, and if they were not he was very 
angry. 


46 


THE SPLENDID QUEST 


The joy of being a knight was still strong 
in Louis in spite of all this quiet work-a-day 
life. So people were not very much surprised 
when he at last declared that he must go off 
on another Crusade. He reached the coast of 
Africa with his sturdy soldiers. It was July. 
The blazing sun shone fiercely down on the 
fortress of Tunis where Louis lay, and on 
the shining tents of the soldiers. Away in the 
farthest distance snow-tipped mountains spoke 
of cool, pure winds. Before them the sea 
glittering in lovely, dancing blueness. But up 
from the dry, hot sands of the desert there came 
awful winds, like gusts of hot air from an oven. 
Fever struck the great heroic Knight and 
King of the Crusaders. He died. 

It was over six hundred years ago. Yet men 
have always loved to think and read about 
him more than any other of the great Kings 
of France. They love to hear of him, not be- 
cause he was a king, but because, from the day 
when he — a twelve-year-old boy — was made 
knight, he did no deed that would make good 
heroes ashamed of him. He was brave, some- 
times madly brave. He was pure and strong; 
he laughed and revelled in good stories. He 
was gentle to those who were weak or poor, but 
very stern to strong men who crushed down 


A TWELVE-YEAR-OLD KNIGHT 47 


others. He did all this because he really loved 
God as a son loves a father. So he also loved 
men as his brothers, for they were all sons of 
the same Father. “He was a very perfect, 
gentle knight*” 


Ill 


THE MAN WITH AN AXE 

A tall, dark-haired boy walked along a 
deer-path through the wild backwoods of 
America, singing as he swung up the track with 
an axe over his shoulder. He was dressed in 
deer-skin trousers and moccasins, and a coarse 
hunting-shirt fastened round his waist with a 
leather strap. He was fourteen years old, but 
was already nearly six feet high. Long arms 
and legs gave him the ungainly look of a wild 
colt. His hands and feet were large ; his face 
was tanned to a dark brown. His hair, stiff 
and black, stood up in a rough mop, refusing 
to be brushed straight — though he never tried 
very hard. 

His keen, deep-set eyes glanced round 
quickly through the trees and undergrowth. 
He picked out a strong, straight tree that 
looked good for making into stout boards. He 
rolled up his sleeves. Then swinging his axe 
in the air, he brought it down on the trunk near 
the root with a swiftness and force that drove 

48 


THE MAN WITH AN AXE 49 


through the bark and cut out a large chip. 
Blow after blow rained on the tree. The sweat 
broke from the boy's forehead, and he stopped 
to wipe it from his eyes. His full lips were set 
with determination. The muscles of his arms 
showed through his swarthy skin like a steel 
cable. At length the ground was strewn with 
chips; the gap in the tree-trunk grew larger 
and deeper; the branches shivered and shook 
under the blows. The tree trembled, swayed, 
was caught by a gust of wind, and then fell to 
earth with a crash of branches and a thud. 

Young Abe sat on the stump of the fallen 
tree to rest, having picked up from where he 
had placed them close at hand, a book and 
some bread and bacon in a cloth. The book 
was Robinson Crusoe , which the boy eagerly 
read as he ate his rough lunch. Then rising 
he worked hard with his axe, lopping branches 
from the tree till there was only the bare trunk 
left. 

He should have been at school. But his 
father, Thomas Lincoln, was so poor that young 
Abe went out into the woods to swing his axe 
for bread. Indeed, in all his life he hardly 
had a year's schooling. But he revelled in 
books. 

The sun was now sinking. So Abe Lincoln 


50 


THE SPLENDID QUEST 


set out again for home with his axe once more 
on his shoulder and his long legs carrying him 
down the path at a swinging pace, till he 
reached the clearing in the forest which he 
called 44 home.” 

The cabin was built of hewed logs, some of 
which Abe had cut himself. It was eighteen 
feet square, with a loft in which he slept. 
Three-legged stools were the chairs. The 
bedstead was made of poles fastened in the 
cracks of the logs on one side and supported by 
a stake on the other. The table was of rough, 
strong wood. There was now a door, though 
for years they had been even without door or 
windows. The door and windows were put in 
when Abe and his brother had a new step- 
mother, who — unlike the stepmothers in fairy 
tales — was wonderfully kind and made them 
all very happy. 

Abe stooped his tall body to go in at the 
doorway and, after his supper, lay flat on the 
floor by the wood fire, with his father’s enorm- 
ous wooden shovel by him. The shovel was his 
copy-book. For, having no paper or pencil or 
pens or ink, and not even owning a slate, he 
loved to lie on the floor in the evening, and 
reach out his hand for a glowing twig from the 
fire. He tapped the twig on the floor till the 


THE MAN WITH AN AXE 51 


glow died out, and then wrote with the charred 
end of the twig on the wooden shovel, doing 
sums or writing bits from Aisop's Fables , T he 
Life of Washington, or The Bible. These, with 
The Pilgrim's Progress and a History of the 
U nited States, were the only books he ever saw 
as a boy. And he had to walk many miles in 
order to borrow some of these. 

When he had filled the wooden shovel with 
writing or sums, he did not stop ; but he got his 
father's plane and shaved the writing off so that 
he could begin again on a clean “ slate.” The 
smooth side of the split logs of which the cabin 
was built was on the inside, so young Abe used 
to go round doing his writing on the walls with 
charred twigs or a rough bit of chalk. 1 Then 
he would go up a ladder into his little loft to 
bed. First thing in the morning, when the sun 
came through the cracks in the roof, he would 
start reading one of his books. One night the 
rain came through the roof on to The Life of 
Washington. It was borrowed, so Abe, who 
had no money, was obliged to cut corn for his 

1 Wall-paper and a pencil are much simpler. But — as 
you have proper copy-books and pens — your mother and 
father will not think you are as wonderful as Abe Lincoln 
if you write on the dining-room wall. In fact, it is quite 
possible that they would be upset. 


52 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


neighbour’s horse for two days to pay the 
damage to the cover of the book. “ At the end 
of two days,” Lincoln told a friend, “ there was 
not a corn blade left on a stalk in the field. I 
wanted to pay full damage for all the wetting 
the book got.” 

By the time he was nineteen Abe Lincoln 
was six feet four inches high in his moccasins. 
He was the strongest young man within many 
miles. Several people who knew him say that 
he was as strong as three ordinary men. He 
once lifted and carried a quarter of a ton 
weight, and at another time walked away with 
a pair of logs while three men were discussing 
whether all of them together could possibly 
carry the logs. A friend said, “ He could strike 
with a mallet a heavier blow — could smite an 
axe deeper into wood than any man I ever saw.” 

Once, when a party of friends had come on 
an ox wagon through the ford of a river which 
was partly frozen, they found, on reaching the 
farther side, that a dog had been left on the 
other bank. The thin, cracking ice, with the 
water lapping over where it was broken, fright- 
ened the dog so that he could not cross. Abe 
took off his moccasins and, turning up his deer- 
skin trousers, waded with his long legs through 
the ice-cold water and carried the dog across 


THE MAN WITH AN AXE 58 


the river. It was bitterly cold for Abe, but that 
was how he liked to use his strength and his 
long legs and arms. He enjoyed being so very 
strong, but he did not use his great muscles 
much in fighting other fellows. When he did 
fight it was usually to stop somebody big from 
bullying a weaker boy. 

Often when he was out alone in the great 
forests, he would stand up on the stump of 
some tree that he had cut down, and he would 
make believe that the silent trees were people, 
and give them a speech full of dry jokes, hard 
facts and splendid thoughts. 

At last, when Abe was twenty-one, his father 
set out to go still deeper into the forests. Abe 
with his axe cleared the path so that the fur- 
niture might be carted through the under- 
growth. When they got to a good place for a 
home he cut down trees to clear a space for 
a house. Then he helped to build the new log 
house for his father and for his stepmother — 
who was, as I say, always very kind to him. 
He finished the work by putting up a fence of 
logs which he had himself split. Then he set 
out to seek his fortune, leaving the great forests. 

He went down the broad Mississippi River 
on a flat-boat to take a cargo of goods to New 
Orleans. When in the southern city he first saw 


54 


THE SPLENDID QUEST 


slavery. He went into a slave auction-room. 
As he saw the negro slaves he remembered how, 
in the book he had read about the United 
States, it said that the whole nation was based 
on the truth of these words, “ All men are born 
free and equal.” It made him angry to see men 
making slaves of other men and women — and 
ever of boys and girls. But when he saw them 
take a mulatto girl and make her run up and 
down to see if she was strong, and then feel her 
— like a sheep in a cattle market — to see how 
much money she was worth, Abe was burning 
with rage. He ground his teeth together and 
said to his friends — 

“ When I get the chance to hit slavery, I’ll hit it 
hard.” 

It was his Quest — his Splendid Quest. 
Some of his friends thought that it was absurd 
for a young man with no money or powerful 
friends and with no education in any big school 
— to talk of “hitting slavery hard.” For thou- 
sands of very rich men owned hundreds of 
thousands of slaves all over the Southern 
States of North America. What could he 
do? 

He went away and began to read books of 
law. He earned his living in many ways. Once 


THE MAN WITH AN AXE 55 


he kept a shop for a short time, and it amused 
people to come in and find Lincoln lying full 
length on the counter, with his heels in the air, 
reading a hard book on the Constitution of the 
United States. At other times he was a captain 
in a war with American Indians, a postman, a 
surveyor, and, lastly, a lawyer. But wherever 
he was there were always many people gather- 
ing round him in groups, because he told the 
funniest stories, knew the most interesting 
facts, and could make the best speech in the 
whole countryside. But when he had kept 
people roaring with laughter or fascinated by 
the power of his speeches for hours, he would 
go away to his room and work at Euclid and 
German grammar long after everybody else was 
asleep. 

The result of his speeches and powerful 
arguments was that, when he was twenty-five, 
he was elected to the Parliament of Illinois — 
that is, the small Parliament in one of the 
American States. Once, later on, when de- 
feated in another election, he said that he was 
like the boy who stumped his toe : it hurt too 
bad to laugh, and he was too big to cry. 

Then his great chance came to fulfil his 
Quest. A mighty speaker named Douglas said 
that they ought to make a law that any State 


56 THE SPLENDID QUEST 

in America could have slaves if it liked. 
Lincoln said that they ought to go back to the 
Constitution : that all men were born free and 
equal, and not have slaves at all. So these two 
men went all over the country speaking against 
one another. Sometimes they made speeches 
for about four hours without stopping. Boys 
who were there enjoyed Abraham Lincoln’s 
jokes and good stories in his speeches. But 
sometimes they went to sleep before he had 
finished. Then the great election of President 
of the United States came, and because of 
these wonderful speeches saying what America 
ought to do, Lincoln, amid noisy shouting and 
cheering, booing and processions, was made 
President of the United States. 

When he went to Washington, where the 
President always lives, the people who had not 
seen Lincoln before wondered at his great 
height and rough face. He stood there with 
his large head of shaggy hair (it would not 
brush straight even when he was President), 
his wrinkled and furrowed brown face, his 
large, strong, broad nose, his eyes looking out 
now with a joke and now with sadness under 
his dark eyebrows, his long arms and legs, in 
clothes that never could be made to fit him. 

Somebody in the crowd — it was not a boy — 


THE MAN WITH AN AXE 57 

said, “ What a common-looking fellow ! ” 
Lincoln heard, and turning round, said with a 
smile, “Yes, God likes common-looking fel- 
lows. That’s why He has made so many of 
them.” 

The slave states in the South rebelled against 
the North. They knew that Lincoln would try 
to end their keeping of slaves. Cannon began 
to boom and rifles to fire. Cavalry charged 
across the field of battle with the thunder of 
horses and the rattle of arms. Lincoln loved 
peace and hated war. But for the sake of the 
slaves and for his country he set to work to 
build ships and get an army that could conquer. 

You know how strong Lincoln was. But the 
awful anxiety of knowing that the freedom of 
hundreds of thousands of slaves depended on 
him, and the hard work of governing the great 
country when it was divided in a great civil 
war, almost wore him to a thread. When he 
was in the very thick of it all, a widow came 
asking him to pardon her son — a soldier — who 
was to be shot for disobedience. The Presi- 
dent examined the case, found that he could 
pardon the soldier, and signed a form setting 
him free. The mother went away rejoicing, 
for her son, whom she had expected to die, was 
to live. A friend, who was with Lincoln on 


58 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


that day, scolded the President kindly, saying, 
“If you attend to little matters like that you 
will kill yourself.” 

Abraham Lincoln’s eyes gleamed and his 
strong, furrowed face broke into a smile as he 
said — 

“ I want it said of me by those who know me best 
that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower 
where I thought a flower would grow.” 

* * * * * 

At last the war was over — President Lincoln 
had won. The slaves were free. Flags waved 
over every house, and bells rocked and rang 
in steeple and tower. Bands played and the 
people sang for joy. The negroes called 
Lincoln “Father Abraham,” because he had 
made them free. Boys who shouted and 
laughed, clapped and danced on that day are 
grey-haired negroes to-day, but they remember 
the glorious hour. President Lincoln went to 
the Opera Flouse and laughed like a schoolboy 
as he watched the players. 

Suddenly a shot was heard, and the sound 
of a struggle. A man leapt from President 
Lincoln’s box and fled across the stage. Abra- 
ham Lincoln, the Messiah of the Negro, was 
dead — killed because he had freed the negro 
from slavery. 


THE MAN WITH AN AXE 59 


As a young man, you remember, he had with 
bugle clearness sounded his Quest — “When I 
get the chance to hit slavery, Til hit it hard ” 
He had hit hard. He swung his axe at the 
root of the tree of slavery and it fell with a 
crash. They might take his life, but they 
could not make the free men slaves again. He 
had followed his Quest — and won a 


IV 

THE KNIGHT OF HIS SISTER 

r A hundred years ago a little man with black 
curly hair, a dark face and dressed in black 
clothes, sat in a room at the India House in 
London. All day he wrote with a long quill 
pen in big books and on serious-looking note- 
paper. Most of the time when he was writing 
he looked very grave. Indeed, even when he 
was out visiting people and making jokes, he 
would look quite serious. For he loved to say 
rather dreadful things quite solemnly so as to 
shock people. That is one reason why all boys 
will like Charles Lamb. 

For instance, one day a dear old lady asked 
him: “How do you like babies, Mr. Lamb? 5 ’ 
You should have seen her face when he 
answered, with his quaint stutter and serious 
face, “ B-b-b-b-boiled, madam.” 

When he had finished work for the day at 
his desk in the India House, he would walk 
through the streets of London to the home 
where he lived with his sister Mary. Now the 
60 


THE KNIGHT OF HIS SISTER 61 


liveliest boy who ever came up to London for 
the first time and wriggled with excitement as 
he rode on a ’bus down the Strand and through 
Trafalgar Square — where the Nelson Monu- 
ment and the fountains and lions are — never 
enjoyed those London streets as much as 
Charles Lamb did. He said that he would 
not change the dirtiest alley in London for the 
finest mountains in Scotland. About London 
he said this — 

“ O her lamps of a night, her rich gold- 
smiths, fruit-shops, toy-shops, mercers, 
hardware-men, pastry-cooks, St. Paul’s 
Churchyard, the Strand, Charing Cross, 
with the man upon a black horse ! All 
the streets and pavements are pure gold. 
I often shed tears in the motley Strand 
from fulness of joy at so much life.” 
***** 

Did you ask how this black-gaitered little 
clerk, who could not wield a sword or swing 
an axe, and who was not strong enough to 
explore distant countries, comes under the 
title of a knight? Well, Ernest, some people 
do not think about him as a hero. They say 
that he did some things that they would not do. 
For myself, I reverence him because in some 
ways he was wonderfully strong, but I love 


62 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


him because he was, in other ways, very weak. 
And, best of all, he never in all his life “put 
on side.” One of his ways of shocking people 
was to make believe he had done worse things 
than he ever actually did. Listen and judge 
for yourself whether he was a hero. 

* * * # * 

When Charles (his friends hardly ever called 
him “ Lamb,” because he said that Christians 
ought to call each other by Christian names) — 
when he had walked through the lovely streets 
of London to his little house, he let himself in 
at the front door and sat down to tea with his 
sister Mary. She was ten years older than he. 
They were the very best chums that brother 
and sister ever could be. Often they were very 
happy together and had the best times possible. 
Over their tea they will have talked about what 
they used to do when they were children. 

“ Do you remember,” Charles would say, 
“the Temple in the Strand where I lived till I 
was seven?” (It is not a real temple, but is 
called The Temple because the Knights Tem- 
plars who went on Crusades built a beautiful 
church there.) “You used to take me, Mary, 
into the round church built by the knights, and 
inside are their figures carved in stone; lying 
full length, with their pointed shields, crossed 


THE KNIGHT OF HIS SISTER 68 


legs and a dog lying under their feet. Then 
we came out into the sunlight again and played 
by the fountain where the sparrows splash and 
wash themselves. From the fountain we 
looked right down over the gardens, past the 
great hall, to the King of Rivers. We could 
see the barges go down the Thames on the 
tide. 5 ' 

“Yes,” Mary will have replied, with a 
laugh, “and do you remember our school in 
Fetter Lane where you were birched in the 
day and I went for lessons in the evening ? ” 

“Rather,” answered Charles; “I remember 
how our legs were wedged into those uncom- 
fortable sloping desks where we sat elbowing 
one another and trying to learn to write pot- 
hooks and hangers.” 

So they would laugh together as they talked 
of how Charles afterwards went to Christ’s 
Hospital School and wore the blue coat and 
yellow stockings that boys have at that school, 
where he played at turning nursery rhymes 
into Latin when he was fourteen. 

“There was poor old Aunt Hetty,” said 
Charles, “the kindest, goodest creature to me 
when I was at school, who used to toddle there 
to bring me good things, when I, schoolboy- 
like, only despised her for it, and used to be 


64 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


ashamed to see her come and sit herself down 
on the old coal-hole steps as we went into the 
old grammar-school, and open her apron and 
bring out her basin, with some nice thing she 
had caused to be saved for me.” 

“ Ah, but think of the holidays in the country 
with our great-aunt / 5 said Mary. 

“Yes,” Charles would reply, “I used to be 
afraid in the evenings in those vast, empty 
rooms, with their worn-out hangings, fluttering 
tapestry, and carved oaken panels, with the 
gilding almost rubbed out. Sometimes I 
walked in the old-fashioned gardens, which I 
had almost to myself, unless now and then a 
solitary gardener would cross me. 

“ How the nectarines and peaches hung upon 
the walls, without my ever offering to pluck 
them, because they were forbidden fruit — 
except now and then. I enjoyed strolling 
about among the old, melancholy-looking yew 
trees, or the firs, and picking up the red berries 
and the fir apples, which were good for nothing 
but to look at. How I loved lying about upon 
the fresh grass, with all the fine garden smells 
around me, or basking in the greenhouse till I 
could almost fancy myself ripening ! Do you 
remember watching the dace that darted to and 
fro in the fish-pond at the bottom of the garden, 


THE KNIGHT OF HIS SISTER 65 


with here and there a great sulky pike hanging 
midway down the water in silent state, as if it 
mocked at their impertinent friskings ? ” 

So Mary and Charles Lamb would talk over 
their tea, and, when the things were cleared 
away, they would sit down on opposite sides 
of the table to set to work on the loveliest of 
books, the T ales from Shakespeare , which they 
wrote together for boys and girls to read before 
they were old enough to enjoy Shakespeare's 
plays for themselves. 

Towards the beginning of this story I told 
how they were splendid friends to one another 
and that often they were very happy together. 
Often, but not always. When they were not 
happy, however, it was not through any quarrel- 
ling, but because Mary had to be taken away 
from Charles. 

Sometimes a strange look would come into 
her eyes. When he saw this Charles was 
deeply troubled. For he knew that this was 
a sign that Mary was going to be ill — not in 
her body but in her mind. When her illness 
came on she did not know what she was saying 
or doing, and Charles was obliged to take her 
to some place where she could be specially 
well attended to and made better again. He 
loved her so much that when he parted from 


66 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


her at these times of illness he could not 
stop the tears from flowing down his cheeks. 
So he would go back to his lonely house 
to wait, sometimes for months, till she was 
better. 

Now Charles loved a maiden, named Alice, 
deeply and strongly. And he felt that if he 
could marry her they would, like the Prince 
and Princess in the fairy stories, “live happy 
for ever after.” And he might, like his care- 
less, selfish, elder brother, have lived for his 
own happiness. But he just said to himself, 
without any boasting about it, “ I must live all 
the time that I can with my sister Mary and care 
for her.” So he gave up the maiden and all 
other happiness in order to be the Knight of his 
sister. 

When she was simply ill in her body he 
would creep around his 

“dear* loved sister’s bed 
With noiseless step.” 

But at all times he took care of her, protected 
her from all the people who would have hurt 
her, shared all his money with her, and would 
make the most comical jokes that kept her 
laughing. When I hear how some gallant 
knight on a horse charged and drove away an 
ogre who had captured a beautiful maiden I 


THE KNIGHT OF HIS SISTER 67 


want to shout and cheer. But when I see 
Charles Lamb giving up everything to care 
tenderly for his sister Mary in all her trouble 
for thirty-five long years, I must stand with 
bowed head, for I am on holy ground. 


V 

THE MAIDEN KNIGHT OF VOICES 

In a little village, near a small grey church 
by a slow, softly-flowing river, there lived, five 
hundred years ago, a little girl who could run 
faster than any of the boys. And, as we shall 
see, she was braver than any boy in the world. 
The village was called Domremy, in Eastern 
France, on the banks of the Meuse. The girl, 
whose name was Joan, had a sweet sunburnt 
face, a slim, lithe body, and black hair. She 
loved to sit in the porch, with her sister and 
her mother, Isabeau d’Arc, listening to stories 
or learning how to spin, until her father, 
Jacques, and her three brothers came home 
from the fields for their evening meal. 

When Jacques, who came home very hungry 
from his work, had eaten his meal, he would 
tell the mother and children of the dreadful 
things that were happening in France. 

“ It was bad enough,” he would say, “ in the 
old days when Edward of England crushed 

our soldiers at Cre$y and Poitiers. But this 
68 


MAIDEN KNIGHT OF VOICES 69 


new English king, Henry, is more terrible as 
a warrior. Since we lost at Agincourt, and in 
those years when we lived under our old mad 
King Charles; yes, and even more now, under 
his wicked Queen and her foolish son, the 
Dauphin, France has sunk deeper and deeper. 
Even the men of Burgundy fight for England 
against their own land. There is great pity for 
France.” 

As Jacques said these things, and told 
how cruel the English soldiers were, little 
Joan’s eyes filled with tears for very pity of 
the country that she loved. The next day, 
when the other children were playing, they 
called out, “Where is Joan, swift-running 
Joan?” But they could not find her. She 
had gone away into a lonely place, and was 
kneeling in the cool, green grass, with some 
wild flowers at her knees, praying to God to 
raise up some one to lead her poor country 
into freedom. 

It was midsummer, and Joan was twelve and 
a half years old. She stood next day in her 
father’s garden, which was close to the church. 
A great light shone in the garden, and a Voice 
spoke to her gently, saying, “Joan, be a good 
child.” Joan was a little frightened, but she 
did not tell any one then about her Vision and 


70 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


Voice. Some time after the Voice came again, 
and she saw a Figure, with manly open face 
and kingly bearing, having wings and a crown, 
telling her of “the pity that was in heaven 
for the fair realm of France, and that she 
must help the King and restore to him his 
kingdom.” 

“Sir,” said little Joan, “I am only a poor 
girl that cannot even ride, much less lead 
soldiers on a battle-field.” 

“God will help you,” the Figure answered, 
and faded from her sight. 

For four years the Visions and the Voices 
came to Joan, and at last, when she was sixteen 
years old, she could not keep quiet any longer, 
for she felt that God was indeed calling her. 
So she got an uncle to ask a French com- 
mander, Robert de Baudricourt, to take her to 
the Dauphin to tell him that she would help 
to save France. Rough Baudricourt said at 
first that she ought to have her ears boxed and 
be sent home, but later he was convinced that 
she was right. Her father was angry, and said 
that she would bring disgrace on the family by 
going among rough, rude soldiers. 

Joan cut her black hair short, and decided 
to wear the costume of a boy, a grey doublet 
and black hose. She rode a horse which was 


MAIDEN KNIGHT OF VOICES 71 


given her — and rode it well from the very 
beginning. Lastly, she wrote a letter to her 
father and mother asking them to forgive her 
for obeying the Voices. Then she started for 
the castle of Chinon on her black horse. 

Joan had never seen such great walls and 
huge towers and ramparts. But she crossed 
the swift river Vienne, and — although they 
kept her waiting for two days — Joan was at 
length led, in her poor grey clothes, into the 
brightly-lighted royal hall, where gorgeously 
dressed ladies and swaggering lords stared at 
the little peasant girl. 

Charles, the Dauphin, had disguised him- 
self, but Joan, though she had never seen him 
before, went straight to him and said, “The 
King of Heaven sends you word by me that 
you shall be crowned at Rheims lieutenant of 
the King of Heaven, who is the King of 
France. 5 ’ But for six weeks they delayed, 
while learned men tried to discover whether 
she was a sorceress or not. She lost patience 
at last, saying, “ This is not a time to talk, but 
to act. 55 

An army was gathered with Joan at the 
head on her black charger in shining white 
armour, carrying a banner of white linen with 
the figure of Jesus embroidered on it. So they 


72 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


marched along the bank of the Loire to 
Orleans, which was besieged by the English. 

Some days after she had entered Orleans 
with her army, the Maid rose and told the 
generals that they must attack the English, 
who had taken a tower across the bridge on 
the other side of the Loire. They tried 
to stop her. She replied, “You have 
been to your Council, and I have been to 
mine.” 

The French army attacked the English in 
their tower, putting scaling-ladders against the 
walls. Arrows and shot showered down upon 
them, while they were thrust from the ladders 
by lances and axes. After six hours of fight- 
ing the men grew weary. An iron bolt from 
a crossbow wounded Joan above the breast. 
She wept in pain, and was carried to a meadow, 
where she was faint. But when some one told 
her that her troops were about to withdraw, 
she leapt to her feet, mounted her horse, and 
cried out — 

" Watch my banner; when it reaches the walls 
the place will be ours.” 

The men fought like furies. A girl’s clear 
voice shouted above the hoarse din and clash — 


“ All is yours— now enter in.’ 


MAIDEN KNIGHT OF VOICES 73 


The day was won, and tired, wounded 
Joan went straight off to bed and to sleep. 

By much persuading she made the lazy 
Dauphin undertake the ride to Rheims to be 
crowned. Leading eight thousand men, she 
attacked Jargeau, a town with great walls, stout 
towers and many cannon, whither the English 
had gone on fleeing from Orleans. As Joan 
mounted a ladder with her banner, a stone 
smote her helmet and knocked her into the 
moat. But she leapt up, crying, “Friends, 
friends, come on ! come on ! ” and the town was 
taken. 

Without stopping for rest, she pressed on to 
Meun and Beaugency, taking both of them, 
and then attacking the main army of the 
English, who fled at Patay under the sudden 
charge of the French. In the evening, as the 
Maid rode over the battle-field, she saw some 
French soldier ill-treating a wounded English 
prisoner. She leapt from the saddle, sat down 
beside the English soldier, took his head in 
her lap, and stayed with him till he died. 

Soon after these wonderful victories, the 
Maid’s great hope was realized. Charles was 
crowned King of France at Rheims, Joan 
kneeling beside him with her banner and 
weeping tears of joy, 


74 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


“Now,” she said, “would to God that I might 
take off my armour, and go home to my father and 
mother, and tend the sheep with my sister and 
brothers, who would greatly rejoice to see me once 
more.” 

Seventeen-year-old Joan loved playing with 
children far better than riding at the head of 
a victorious army. And the common people 
followed her with love and devotion. They 
asked her to touch objects which they brought 
to her, so that they might become holy. 
“Touch them yourselves, 55 she said simply; 
“your touch will do them as much good as 
mine.” 

The Voices called her to go on with her 
task. But Charles, who was as great an idiot 
when crowned King of France as he had been 
when Dauphin, delayed the army when she 
urged him to march straight on to Paris. At 
last she set out without the King, but the 
English had had time to pour forces into Paris 
and to strengthen its walls, deepen its ditches 
and prepare ammunition. The King, half- 
ashamed, came lagging slowly and uselessly 
behind. 

The Maid led the attack on Paris, passed 
the first ditch, and, amid a sweeping hail of 
arrows, stood on the edge of the second ditch, 


MAIDEN KNIGHT OF VOICES 75 


calling to her men, when a shaft pierced her 
thigh. “ Come on ! ” she still shouted to her 
soldiers in the gathering twilight. The French 
bugles sounded a retreat, but Joan stayed on 
till midnight, when the King of France, who 
had reached the camp, sent soldiers to fetch 
her back. The next day she was riding against 
Paris again when the King sent orders to turn 
back. The Maid was broken-hearted. She 
laid down her suit of white armour in the old 
chapel of St. Denis. 

Joan, during the next winter, was forced to 
stay in the Court amid its lazy pleasure-seekers. 
This she hated above all things. Then she 
slipped away to the help of Compiegne. She 
charged out from the town and made the 
enemy flee before her, but her men lost heart 
when attacked again from behind, and they 
fled back into Compiegne. Joan would not 
retreat, but one of her leaders seized her bridle 
and led the horse back. Just before they 
reached the bridge into the town the portcullis 
was dropped and the drawbridge lifted. Her 
own traitorous, cowardly people had left Joan 
to her enemies. The sun was sinking, and its 
light shone on the flowing banner which Joan 
carried high. A score of soldiers threw them- 
selves against her, tore her crimson skirt from 


70 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


her, wrenched her from her saddle, and made 
her prisoner. But she would not surrender. 
She said — 

“ I have given my allegiance to Another than yon, 
and I will keep my oath to Him.” 

The Duke of Luxembourg carried her away. 
He would have sold her to her friends, if her 
friends would have raised a ransom. But the 
craven, coward King of France and his foul 
Court never raised a finger to save Joan or to 
ransom her from her enemies. From her 
prison she dropped sixty feet to the ground in 
an effort to escape. The fall nearly killed her, 
and she was unconscious for a long time. It 
was the only time when she had disobeyed 
her Voices. At length she was handed over 
to the English. At Rouen she was kept in 
an iron cage, chained by her neck, hands and 
feet; the men removing her, when her trial 
began, to a truckle-bed, where they chained 
her to a wooden beam. The rough soldiers 
insulted and ill-treated her. 

At last she came before the court of theo- 
logians for trial — not as a prisoner of war, but 
as an unbeliever ! In vain they tried to entrap 
her. Her simplicity and honesty were so clear, 
and her quickness and wit so brilliant, that 


MAIDEN KNIGHT OF VOICES 77 


every now and then even her judges could not 
help exclaiming, “Well spoken, Joan” 

The monstrous brutes then led her to a vault 
in the castle and showed her fire, pincers, rack 
and screws, but the brave Maid, true to her 
Voices, said, “ Even if you tear me limb from 
limb, I will tell you nothing more.” Her 
courage in prison was even more wonderful 
than her daring in battle. She signed with a 
cross on a paper. She did not know that the 
writing on the paper said that her Voices were 
false. When she found this out she was full 
of sorrow, and said, “ I never meant to deny 
my Voices.” 

Now they declared more than ever that she 
was an unbeliever and must be burned. She 
moaned, “ Alas ! am I to be so horribly and 
cruelly treated, that my body, which is quite 
pure and uncorrupted, must to-day be con- 
sumed and reduced to ashes.” 

She became calmer. At eight o’clock in the 
morning of May 30, 1430, she was put on a cart 
in a long white garment. A vast and silent 
crowd stood awestruck in the market-place, and 
all the multitude wept to behold her. 

Some of the very judges who had condemned 
her could not bear to stay and see the end. 
The faggots were lighted, and the flames 


78 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


mounted. Her last thought was for the safety 
of the man who stood holding the Cross up for 
her to see. She told him not to stand too near 
to the flames. Then with a loud cry of Jesus 
her head fell on her breast. 

A noble Englishman left the square crying, 
“We are lost; we have burnt a saint.” She 
was nineteen when she died. 

Since that day France has never been sub- 
ject to another king. By the irresistible power 
of daring courage and flaming faith the Maid 
had won more wonderful battles than the 
greatest generals of France. She won them 
without any magic except that which every one 
may use — the magic of utter obedience to the 
Voice that speaks in us all. 


VI 


'THE HIDDEN PILGRIMS 

There was a little city, and few men within it; 
and there came a great king against it, and besieged 
it, and built great bulwarks against it Now there 
was found in it a poor wise man, and he by his 
wisdom delivered the city ; yet no man remembered 
that same poor man . 1 

“Jolly hard lines,” said Ernest, as he looked 
down from the hill to a field where a peasant 
hoed his turnips. 

“On whom?” I asked. 

“Oh, on the poor wise man, because every- 
body forgot him, although he’d saved the city.” 

‘HThat’s all very well,” I said, “and it was 
distinctly low down of the people to forget 
him; but, after all, it was the flying king who 
had the hardest time of it.” 

Ernest wagged his head doubtfully. “The 
king who attacked the city ought to be ready 
to take a whacking, but the man who saved it 
would expect to get praised.” 

I agreed, but put the question, “Which 

1 Eccles. ix. 14-15. 

79 


80 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


would you rather be : the defeated king, or the 
poor wise man whose cleverness freed the 
city ? ” 

We agreed that we would rather be the poor 
man, but that Ernest was right when he said 
that it was “hard lines” on him. The king 
got what he deserved, but the poor man did 
not. 

“ But people did not forget the knights and 
heroes you’ve been telling me about,” said 
Ernest. “ They remember all about King 
Louis and Abraham Lincoln and Joan of Arc.” 

“Yes,” I said, “but there are thousands of 
unknown knights — hidden pilgrims — who do 
just as good work as the others, yet nobody 
knows about them. A hero may be like a boy 
scout — the more he is hidden, the better he does 
his work. 

“ Do you remember about the school-boy 
who was asked ‘ What is honour ? ’ and replied, 

Honour is being a great deal better than you need 
be whether anybody knows or not. 

That boy was truer than any dictionary. And 
the real knight, though he likes to have the 
glory that comes from winning, nevertheless 
fights first of all not for glory, but to rescue 
the damsel or slay the dragon. You remember 


THE HIDDEN PILGRIMS 81 


the Lord Mayor’s Show that you saw last 
autumn, the prancing horses and scarlet cloaks, 
the clatter of the soldiers’ swords, the sailors 
pulling the cannon, the blare of brass and the 
thud of drums, and the Lord Mayor himself 
in his glittering coach, rolling through the cheer- 
ing, shouting crowds. Those people in the pro- 
cession were getting the glory, but the man who 
is really keeping England alive to-day is the 
man you’ve been staring at for the last quarter 
of an hour.” 

“What man? Where? Oh, the chap with 
the hoe down there,” pointing to the turnip- 
hoeing peasant who was then resting. “Well, 
he doesn’t look a very lively knight.” 

I could only quote — 

“Bowed with the weight of centuries, he leans 
Upon his hoe, and gazes in the ground; 

The emptiness of ages in his face, 

And on his back the burden of the world.” 

“No, he isn’t a lively knight, but ‘on his 
back ’ is ‘ the burden of the world.’ He is 
making turnips grow while some people can 
only consume apples.” 

Ernest’s hand went to his bulging pockets. 

“His soil-stained clothes and chalky boots 
would be scorned in many rich homes; but 
those very homes are built and supported by 


82 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


the work of such men as this labourer with his 
hoe, who does his slow pilgrimage between the 
rows of turnips. He feeds us and he rears 
sturdy boys. Nor can we ever cease to rever- 
ence men who work with hoe or spade, with saw 
or plane, creating good things for their fellow 
men, when we remember that the Hero of all 
heroes Himself worked as a Carpenter in the 
workship at Nazareth. 

“ Do you know, as I watch that man with the 
hoe, and dream, I see a long procession of 
hidden pilgrims whose names no man knows, 
and whom no man can number. 

“ On a rock-bound coast some men land 
from a small sailing ship. They climb through 
a winding defile into the land of Greece. They 
have left home and their own cities in Asia 
Minor to carry a great message of good news 
They will never come back again. 

“The ship puts out again and sails up the 
Mediterranean towards the setting sun, sweep- 
ing through the Straits of Messina and then 
running north to Rome. There we see girls who 
refuse to enter the heathen temples as Vestal 
virgins. They are questioned by stern judges, 
and confess that they have forsaken the gods 
of Rome, and worship one God through Jesus. 
Soon they stand on parched sand in a hideous 


THE HIDDEN PILGRIMS 83 


ring of ten thousand excited faces. A shout 
goes up from the vast crowd around the 
Coliseum. There is a signal. Iron gates swing 
open with a clang. Hungry lions leap out 
toward those maidens. 

“ Another ship sails up the Adriatic to 
Venice, and an eager band of nameless pilgrims 
marches over the frozen passes of the Alps into 
Northern Europe, They meet barbarous 
warriors clothed in skins, shaking their 
matted manes and waving spears as their wild 
shouts ring through the forests. The hidden 
pilgrims are carrying the Message to these 
Goths. Some of them accept the new Way. 
The other Goths, infuriated, burn their houses 
and tents to the ground, leaving them homeless 
and defenceless. 

“ Still another ship sails from Northern 
Europe into the fogs of a narrow sea bearing 
men who land on a shelving coast. They settle 
in the kingdom of Kent and walk westward 
along these hills on which we are now seated. 
Some were thrown into pits and others were 
slain. Their names are not known. But just 
because they came fourteen hundred years ago, 
the Glory of the Quest comes to us two here 
on this high Way where those hidden pilgrims 
walked. 


84 


THE SPLENDID QUEST 


“ Hundreds of years pass, and another ship 
puts out from the west of these northern islands 
and sails into the sunset for weeks carrying 
pilgrims to a new land. In the depths of those 
American forests, ringed in a cruel cage of 
copper-faces, men are burned and have their 
nails torn from their fingers. And to-day in 
lumber-shack or mining-camp hidden pilgrims, 
men with rough hands to grip pick and axe, 
live ‘ straight 5 because they care for the Quest. 

“ Again, see a street in Edinburgh and chil- 
dren run swiftly over the pavements in their 
play. It is night. Here is a hidden pilgrim. 

“Old and weary, and worn and grey, 

A woman walked in the Northern town, 

And through the crowd as she wound her way 
One saw her loiter, and then stoop down, 

Hiding something away in her old torn gown. 

‘You are hiding a jewel,’ the watcher said; 

— Ah ! that was her heart had the truth been read — 

‘ What are you hiding ? ’ he cried again ; 

And her dim eyes filled with a sudden pain, 

As under the flickering light of the gas 
She showed him her gleaning : ‘ It’s broken glass,* 
She said ; ‘ I hae picked it up frae the street 
To be oot o’ the road of the bairnies’ feet.’ 

Under the fluttering rags astir 
That was a royal heart to beat; 

Would that the world had more like her, 

Clearing the road for the bairnies’ feet.” 


THE HIDDEN PILGRIMS 85 


“ I see a room in London. A man just home 
from China is talking to me. 4 Yes/ he says, 
4 we were obliged to fly for our lives when the 
Boxer outbreak came. They surrounded us 
with waving swords and bludgeons. My boy 
who was twelve years old, was running about 
without any sense of fear and in the thick of 
the melee . He called to me, 44 Father, isn’t 
this like one of Henty’s novels.” It was. 
Look here/ And the missionary bent his 
head so that I could see a great dint in 
his skull. 4 That was from a blow with a 
Boxer sword/ he said. 4 My pith helmet broke 
the stroke, or I should not be here to-day. The 
real heroes of that day/ he continued, 4 were our 
Chinese Christians, who were cut down and shot 
rather than give up the service of Jesus/ 

“Still the race of Hero-spirits 

Pass the lamp from hand to hand; 

Still the youthful hunter gathers 
Fiery joy from wold and wood; 

He will dare as dared his fathers, 

Give him cause as good.” 


As Ernest and I rose to leave the hill, the 
sun slowly sank behind the lion-mass of Leith 
Hill amid a piled-up City of Golden Cloud. 
Shafts of fiery light struck like swords into 


86 THE SPLENDID QUEST 

the arc of the sky and blazed along the 
Pilgrims’ Way. The bushes burned like torches 
in the glow of the sun. 

Then we saw as it were a Holy City. “ And 
the street of the City was pure gold, as it were 
transparent glass.” Towards it there marched 
from every side an innumerable host of the 
hidden pilgrims of the Cross. They came from 
the East and the West. In the dark valleys they 
bore torches to give light for the steps of the 
children. But as they neared the gates their 
torchlight was caught into the Glory that did 
lighten the City. And the gates were never 
shut. In the World the pilgrims were hidden, 
nameless and forgotten. In the City they found 
their names written in letters of gold in the 
Book of the King. 


VII 

THE DARING FISHERMAN 

The fisher is a warrior 
Whose camp is on the foam, 

And he returns from victory 
Bringing his captives home. 

Such a Fisher stood on the shore of a great 
lake, large enough to be called a sea. He 
was girt in his fisher’s linen coat. He had 
dark flashing eyes and crisp black hair, a sun- 
burnt face, tanned with the sting of the breezes, 
and strong legs planted firmly on the sloping 
sea-shore. 

As he looked out over the Lake, Simon the 
Fisher saw first one and then another brother 
fisherman put out his boat and hoist a small 
sail. After the little ships had gone out into 
the deeper water they let down nets, drawing 
them up from time to time, when they threw 
into the ship the flapping silvery fish that were 
caught. 

Simon, who was looking up the Lake towards 
a gap in the mountains, watched the sky 
87 


88 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


anxiously. Then he saw a white scud of 
foam sweeping over the water at the end of 
the Lake. There could be only one thing to 
do. He put his hands together round his 
mouth and shouted some words to the men in 
the ships. Hastily they swung their nets 
aboard and put into the little bay just in time 
to escape the sudden squall that lashed the 
water into a confused fury of waves. 

“Well, Simon,” James, one of the young 
fishermen, would say; “ you saved us that time.” 

“Ay, and thank you for it, my lad,” old 
Zebedee would remark. “ Simon has a quick 
eye — and a quick temper,” he would add with 
a smile. “ Simon is like the storm that has 
just swept down the Lake. You think all is 
quiet, then he rages and roars, yet in a few 
moments he is as still as yon Lake has become 
again. Now, lads, let us get back to the 
fishing.” 

Simon would turn after such a happening 
and join his quieter brother Andrew in mend- 
ing the nets ready for their own fishing. Then 
they, too, put out a short distance from the 
shore and threw their nets into the sea. As 
they did this a young Man, about their own 
age, thirty years, walked by the sea. And 
He greeted them with a smile. They had met 


THE DARING FISHERMAN 89 


Him before. He had already made them feel 
that He was unlike any one whom they had 
ever known. 

For only a short time before they had been 
listening to their great preacher, John, who had 
stirred their blood as they stood on the banks 
of the river. And this other young Man from 
their own district of Galilee, whom they had 
heard of as a carpenter, had also come to hear 
John. But when John, who had poured blaz- 
ing scorn on the great people of the land, saw 
this young carpenter, he said, “ Behold one 
whose sandals I am not worthy to carry.” That 
was how the very Face of Jesus always im- 
pressed active and healthy young people, 
especially young men and boys. 

His words, too, were so full of wisdom, and 
His Face looked on them with such love that 
they could not help loving Him in return. 

“Simon, Andrew,” said Jesus, as they 
looked up; “come after me.” Then with a 
wave of His hand towards the nets, “Follow 
me, I will make you fishers of men.” 

Across the blue waters of the Lake, Simon 
saw the bright crags and yellow limestone glow- 
ing in the sun, while, all up and down the 
lake, the water was dotted with fisher boats 
skimming along before the breeze or hanging 


90 


THE SPLENDID QUEST 


still with bare masts over their nets. Behind 
lay the little village called Fisherhome 
(Bethsaida), a hamlet of the larger town of 
Capernaum. 

This was the home where Simon had run 
to and fro ever since he was a baby. Under 
those olive trees he had played; those dark 
green fig trees had fed him and given him 
shade when he was tired with his play. Those 
smooth and spreading walnut trees had been 
a tent for him when he played at being 
Bedouins, as we do at being Indians. From 
those spreading vineyards he had been given 
most luscious grapes. He was in the most 
fruitful spot in all the country; the tiny corner 
which was called “ The Garden of Princes.” 

Here as a boy he had raced along the sands 
and shouted as his father came back from the 
day’s fishing. And on a proud day he had 
first climbed over the edge of his father’s fish- 
ing boat and gone out with him on to the 
wonderful Lake itself. 

“Clear silver water in a cup of gold, 

Under the sunlit steeps of Gadara, 

It shines — His Lake — the Sea of Chinnereth — 

The waves He loved, the waves that kissed His feet 
So many blessed days. Oh happy waves ! 

Oh little, silver, happy Sea, far-famed, 

Under the sunlit steeps of Gadara!” 


THE DARING FISHERMAN 91 


Now, however, Simon was a young man. 
The Voice had spoken. “ Simon, follow Me.” 
Simon was quick-tempered — so his friends 
had found him. But he was just as impetuous 
in his fine daring when doing strong, good 
deeds, as in his sudden outbursts of anger. 

Without hesitating he rose, pulled his nets 
into the ship, and climbed over its side. 
Andrew came with him, for it was Andrew who 
had first brought Jesus and Simon together and 
had first understood that Jesus was a great 
Leader. So Simon climbed the rocky roads 
with Jesus and walked through the white, 
sunny villages of his native land with his 
Hero. Often they walked up the mountain 
side, and there under the blue sky, on the 
grass of the hill near the shade of the olive 
trees, with Jesus seated on some boulder, they 
rested and listened to His wonderful message. 

There was one great day when Simon took 
Jesus to his own little stone cottage home. 
His wife’s mother was ill, but Jesus went in 
and taking her by the hand healed her, so that 
she could get up and help — as she loved to do 
— in the work of the house. 

When Simon was fond of anybody he always 
loved them very much. Now he had learned 
to love and reverence Jesus more than any 


92 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


one else in the whole wide world. Like all 
really strong people, he often felt himself to 
be very weak. There was, for instance, one 
lovely morning on the Lake of Galilee, when 
Jesus had helped Simon, in the fresh com- 
panionship of dawn, to catch his fish. Some- 
thing in the radiant strength of Jesus had over- 
come Simon, and he called out, “ Go from 
me, for I am a sinful man”; just as every 
boy when he has met his greatest friend and 
hero after doing some low-down thing, has 
said, — perhaps only to himself, “ I am a 
beast. 5 ’ 

Simon had a great deal of the boy in him, 
as you will see. For one thing he was always 
rushing into a dangerous act with fine daring, 
and then finding his courage ooze out of his 
finger-tips. 

One night he saw his Hero walking upon 
the waves of Galilee, to come to His disciples, 
who were in a boat. He walked on 
“The waves He loved, the waves that kissed His feet.” 

Simon, with a dazzling daring and a splendid 
faith, leapt over the edge of the boat and for 
a moment his courage was equal to the need. 
He stood on the water, but his daring failed, 
and he cried out, “ Lord, save me, 55 as he threw 
up his arms, and Jesus stooped to lift him out 


THE DARING FISHERMAN 93 

of the waters that would have swallowed him 
up. 

It was the same quick Simon who climbed 
with the tiny group of friends over the tufted 
grass and the strewn boulders of the Mount 
to the top. [There such a radiant glory of light 
shone round their Hero and Master, that Simon 
called out — 

“Oh, it is good to be here. Let us camp 
out on this mountain together.” 

But Jesus knew that there was a boy in the 
valley below who was very ill. So He led 
Simon down and healed the boy, to show 
that mountain-top holy-days are good just 
because they do come to an end and make 
us more fit to do good things in the valley 
afterward. 

After this Simon and the other friends of 
Jesus went quite a long walk northward over 
rocky roads and between great hills where 
robbers lived. At last they came to a place 
that was on the edge of the country of the 
barbarian peoples. And as they stood there 
at Caesarea Philippi, Jesus asked them who 
they thought He was. Impetuous Simon 
called out quickly — 

“ Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living 
God.” 


94 


THE SPLENDID QUEST 


Jesus was especially rejoiced at Simon know- 
ing and saying this without being told, and 
saying it just at the time when people in the 
City were declaring that He was a traitor and 
ought to be killed. 

“Simon/’ He said, “you shall be called a 
Rock ” (i. e . Peter) “ and on this Rock I will 
build.” 

Simon Peter was very proud of this splendid 
nickname, and always liked to be called by it. 
But only a few minutes after it had been given 
to him, he, in his foolish hot-headedness, tried 
to stop Jesus from doing what He knew was 
His work. Peter did it because he loved 
Jesus and wanted to keep Him alive, but if 
was a mistake; and Jesus was obliged to be 
very stern with Peter and say, “ Get behind 
me, Tempter.” 

Then there came the last evening on which 
the friends were all to be together. They sat 
at supper in an upper room. And Jesus, to 
show His disciples what kind of life they ought 
to live, took a basin of water and a towel and 
began to wash their feet. But when it came to 
impetuous Peter’s turn he jumped up and said, 
“No, Lord, you must never wash my feet.” 
But Jesus said that only thus could he learn 
and be clean. Peter rushed to the other 


THE DARING FISHERMAN 95 


extreme, and said, “ Then not my feet only but 
my hands and my head.” 

It was a very short time after this, later 
the same evening in a garden near Jerusalem, 
that Jesus stood with His friends at night. 
They saw torches coming nearer and nearer, 
and heard the sound of voices murmuring 
and the crackling of twigs as people walked 
toward them. At last the group of people 
got quite close to them. They had come 
to capture Jesus, and they came at night- 
time, because they were afraid of the crowds 
who were about in the day-time who loved 
Jesus and would want to stop them from taking 
Him. 

Peter was fiercely angry with them. He 
lifted a sword which he was carrying, and 
though he was only one against a crowd, he 
smote wildly at the first man he saw. The blow 
struck off the man’s ear. Jesus, without blam- 
ing Peter, touched the man’s wound and healed 
it. Peter could dare a multitude when his 
passion was aroused. But he was — like us all 
— afraid of being sneered and laughed at. 
Only a few hours later, when Jesus had been 
led off to the high-priest’s house, Peter was 
standing in the courtyard, He warmed his 
hands at an open brazier, a fire that stood there. 


96 


THE SPLENDID QUEST 


A servant-maid came along and hearing the 
soft Galilean burr in Peter’s speech, said, 
pointing to Peter with her finger and waving 
her other hand in the direction of the hall 
where Jesus waited for the hour of His trial, 
“This fellow was also with Him.” 

Peter started and flushed under his tanned 
skin. Jesus was being sneered at as a traitor. 
Suspicious eyes were watching Peter himself, 
and Jesus would very likely be killed, nailed 
to a Roman gallows. Why should Peter die 
too?, And he fiercely denied again and again 
that he knew anything about Jesus. 

The first streaks of dawn crept into the 
Eastern sky. Jesus walked slowly through the 
courtyard on His way to His death. And He 
turned and looked upon Peter, Peter so daring 
with his sword only an hour or two ago, now 
afraid to own to a servant that he ever knew 
Jesus. “I never knew the Man,” Peter had 
just shouted. The cock crew to herald a new 
day. But the day was bitter, bitter night for 
Peter. Peter — the Rock ! Only on that last 
day he had boasted like a boy, “ Though every- 
body else runs away from You, I will not.” 
Peter went out under the waning stars and wept 
bitterly. 

The next day Peter walked up a Hill near 


THE DARING FISHERMAN 97 


the City. There, between two thieves, he saw 
the Heroic Master, with whom he had walked 
about these hills for three glorious years, nailed 
to a Roman gallows. And the last words that 
that Friend had heard from Peter’s lips were, 
“ I never knew the Man.” Peter thought he 
would never have the chance to put it right 
again. 

What is this incredible news? Jesus Christ 
is risen ! It cannot be. But the bare possi- 
bility is enough. Peter races down the paths, 
the wind rushing through his hair, careless of 
stones, leaping over obstacles. He reaches the 
tomb. It is empty. He cannot bear the 
suspense. He must do something. “ Look 
here,” he says to his companions, “ Pm going 
fishing.” 

All through the night he toils till his arms 
ache and his back is weary, trying to forget 
his sorrow. Early in the morning they draw 
near to the shore. The dawn begins. From 
the hills there comes the faint, distant sound 
of a cock crowing. Peter shudders at the 
remembrance. 

Look, what is that dim Figure on the shore, 
clothed in the mist of the morning. It cannot 
be. It is. And Peter, with all his old im- 

o 


98 THE SPLENDID QUEST 

petuous spirit, hurls himself over the edge of 
the ship, and plunges through the water. Drip- 
ping, breathless, he drops at his Master’s feet. 
“Do you love Me?” comes the question from 
Jesus, and vehemently Peter cries out that 
he does love Him. “Am I very dear to 
you?” asks Christ. “Master, you know that 
I love you.” 

“Feed My sheep, My lambs,” comes the 
glorious order. The traitor is made shepherd. 

Peter the Fisherman had always been a 
daring, impetuous boy and man. Now he grew 
far more daring and courageous, and never 
denied his Master. It was he who first boldly 
stood before many thousands of people to tell 
the story of his Master’s life and death. His 
pluck and determination carried him over 
mountain and river, through floods and across 
seas, to face robbers and kings with equal com- 
posure on his Shepherd Quest — to feed His 
lambs. 

At last when the hair of the young fisher- 
man had gone grey in the great work, the 
Romans took him prisoner to crucify him as his 
Master had been crucified. Peter’s mind 
flashed back to that day when, afraid of being 
crucified, he had shouted, “I know not the 
Man.” So he said now, “ I am not worthy to 


THE DARING FISHERMAN 99 


be crucified as my Master was. Crucify me 
head downward.” And they did. 

Among the Knights of the Splendid Quest 
this Hero stands high. He ranks nobly in 

“that chivalry of God% 

The soldier saints," 


VIII 

OUR LADY OF DINGY STREETS 

Splash ! Dorothy dived into the quiet 
Yorkshire lake. Her lithe little body slipped 
through the water like some silvery fish as she 
swam swiftly across to the further bank. 

ft HI race you back, 3 ’ shouted her brother, as 
he dropped into the water. Away they sped, 
swimming with all their might. At first he 
seemed to be gaining; then she drew nearer to 
him; and at last, just as they got to the edge, 
with one last spurt Dorothy touched the bank 
first. 

Later in the day Dorothy Pattison would ride 
her frisky pony up to the moors near her village 
home in Hanxwell. She would row with the 
boys in their sculling-boat, and in the winter- 
time she revelled in flying round and round the 
lake on her skates, with her mane flying in the 
wind, till the colour glowed in her cheeks. 

She was a girl who could beat a good many 
boys at these sports, yet she loved her dolls 
even more than most girls do. She especially 

IOO 


LADY OF DINGY STREETS 101 


enjoyed playing “ Let’s pretend ” that the dolls 
were ill and she was the nurse. She would 
give them physic from little bottles and bandage 
up their heads and arms and legs. 

“When I grow up/’ she said to her sister in 
those talks that all boys and girls have when 
they are supposed to be asleep in bed — “ when I 
grow up I’ll be a nurse or a lady doctor and do 
simply everything for my patients/’ 

One day they were told to go about the house 
very quietly and not make any noise, because 
Dorothy’s sister was ill in bed. 

“Let me sit up and nurse her,” said Dora, 
who — beside wanting to nurse her sister — was 
not keener on going off to bed than other girls 
or boys. Her father and mother thought that 
it would be too much for her. But she some- 
how succeeded in getting quietly into the room, 
and she seated herself by the side of the bed. 
Having started, she was allowed to go on. 
Her nursing was so soothing and clever — of 
course with the help of her mother — that her 
sister soon got quite well, and they could go 
out to play with the boys again. 

When Dorothy was two years older a fever 
spread through the village. Now she used to 
go to visit an old woman in a cottage in this 
village, and they were very close friends. One 


102 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


day Dorothy heard that "the old woman was ill 
with the fever. She ran down the village street, 
in at the garden gate and opened the cottage 
door. She found that the poor old dame had 
been left all alone, though she was very ill. 

Dorothy did not hesitate for a second. She 
hung up her coat behind the door and said — 

“ I have come to stay with you.” Then she 
made herself very busy getting nice tasty bits 
of food cooked and making everything look 
cosy and clean. [This made the old soul feel 
happier. 

Then Dora, who had been too busy to think 
of anything except her work, began to wonder 
whatever her father would say to her. But 
she thought it would be very cowardly and 
cruel to leave the old woman alone, so she 
got a little boy to run up to her home at the 
rectory to say that she was with the old woman 
who was ill, and that she was going to stay the 
night. Her father said, “Very well, as she 
has made up her mind to stay without asking 
permission, she must stay on now to nurse the 
old woman whether she wants to or not.” 

She bravely went on doing everything like 
a nurse — washing and feeding her, giving her 
medicine and reading to her. But the old 
.woman got worse and then died, and poor 


LADY OF DINGY STREETS 103 


Dorothy — who had Been full of courage — was 
dreadfully frightened as she sat there through 
the night all alone. 

She sent another boy up to her father to 
say that she wanted to come home. He sent 
back the message, “ Stay where you are till you 
are sent for/’ which would sound very cruel. 
But, as a matter of fact, very quickly a carriage 
came with her old nurse, and Dorothy was 
driven off to the seaside to have all the fever 
infection blown away by the salt breezes. 

Dorothy grew up to be taller and stronger 
than most girls. She seemed always ready to 
see the comical things, and would laugh and 
sing all over the house. When she was out 
walking on the great moor, with the purple 
heather under her feet and the strong winds 
blowing her hair about her face, she felt like 
shouting for joy. Then she would walk rapidly 
back and nurse her mother who was ill. At last 
her mother died and Dorothy went out to teach 
at the village school at Woolston, Buckingham- 
shire, where she lived in a very little cottage, 
and all the boys and girls got very fond of her. 

You remember, however, that when quite a 
girl she had found out what her Quest was to 
be — she was to be a nurse. 

So she joined a Sisterhood of jvomen who 


104 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


were called the Good Samaritans because they 
loved to rescue and help people who were ill. 
They went into the towns to work among people 
who were having a bad time, and to cheer and 
heal them. Dorothy had to do all the work of 
the house where she was staying. She would 
go down on her hands and knees to scrub floors 
and polish grates. She swept and dusted, while 
sometimes she cooked. She also learned a great 
deal more about nursing. 

Dorothy had lived all her young days in 
the country among green trees and fields and 
singing birds. Now she went into a town where 
great chimneys sent out columns of black smoke 
that covered the trees in grime, while only 
the soot-covered sparrows chirped. Great 
wheels went round at the mouth of deep, dark 
coal-pits, while at night the sky glowed a murky 
red with the glow of the furnaces. 

The town is called Walsall, and Dorothy, or 
Sister Dora, as they now named her, went into 
a quite small cottage hospital. 

The surgeon thought that she was a wonder- 
fully quick and clever nurse, so that when a 
bigger hospital was built on the very top of 
the hill where Walsall stands, she took charge 
of it. 

She was so jolly and told such comical tales 


LADY OF DINGY STREETS 105 


that even boys almost wanted to have a broken 
leg or something of that sort so that she could 
nurse them. She played games with them, 
like draughts and dominoes, and when they 
heard her laugh it made them forget all their 
pain. But if she heard two boys quarrelling 
or a man using bad words, then her mouth 
would go quite stern and she would stop them 
very firmly. They really liked her for telling 
them that they were wrong. Generally when 
people come out of hospital they are glad to 
forget all about it. But they loved her so much 
that after they had gone away for some time a 
message would come up — “ Please, Sister Dora, 
John Nightingale (or some other name) has 
called and would like to see you.” 

Very often when she had been hard at work 
nursing all day, and had at last got off to bed 
and to a restful sleep, there would come a ring 
at the hospital gate. She would not want to 
get up, but she would overcome her sleepiness, 
go down and find that some drunken men had 
been fighting and cutting one anothers’ heads. 
She would dress their wounds very gently and 
then give them a very straight talking to. 

“ I have been at work nursing all day,” she 
would say, “and now, when the time comes to 
rest, you go fighting like beasts in the street, 


106 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


and then come in the middle of the night for 
me to mend your broken heads.” 

They were ashamed of themselves. 

Here is a story which shows that she was 
braver than most men. I will just give the 
story as Mrs. Creighton, who knew Sister Dora, 
tells it in a beautiful little book called Some 
Famous Women. 

One night a fine healthy young man was 
brought in with his arm torn and twisted by a 
machine. The doctor said that nothing could 
save it, and that he must cut it off at once. 
Sister Dora was moved by the despair of the 
poor man; she looked long at his arm and at 
himself, and the man cried out, “ Oh, Sister ! 
save my arm for me ; it’s my right arm.” When 
she turned to the doctor and asked if she might 
try to save the arm, he only asked her if she 
was mad, and said that the man’s life could 
not be saved unless his arm were taken off at 
once. But she turned to the patient and said, 
“Are you willing for me to try to save your 
arm, my man?” He was willing, but the sur- 
geon was very angry, and refused to help her, 
saying, “ Remember, it’s your arm,” and telling 
her she must take all the responsibility. Night 
and day for three weeks she tended him, natur- 
ally feeling terribly anxious as to what would 


LADY OF DINGY STREETS 107 


happen. She often said afterwards, “ How I 
prayed over that arm.” At the end of chat time 
she asked the surgeon to come and look at her 
work, and when she unbandaged the arm and 
showed it to him, straightened and in a healthy, 
promising condition, he exclaimed, “Why, you 
have saved it, and it will be a useful arm to 
him for many a long year.” It is not surprising 
that Sister Dora wept with joy at her success, 
nor that the man became one of her most de- 
voted admirers. He was nicknamed “ Sister’s 
Arm ” in the hospital, and used to come back 
often to see her after he had left. 

It was dreadfully difficult to get Sister Dora 
to go away for holidays, because she loved her 
work so much. And even when they subscribed 
a lot of money and bought her a little carriage 
and a pony, she used it for sending the people 
who were getting better out for drives in the 
country. But when she did take a holiday she 
enjoyed it enormously. She bathed or skated, 
climbed over fences, crawled through hedges, 
walked across streams of water, marched over 
the moors and down the hills; leading the way 
and going on till even the boys, whose muscles 
were strong with plenty of cricket and football, 
were tired out. 

Then there came a year of terrible strain. 


108 


THE SPLENDID QUEST 


Month after month she spent fighting an 
epidemic of small -pox practically alone in an 
isolation hospital. Then in the autumn an 
awful explosion at some iron-works covered 
eleven men with fiery molten metal. They 
hurled themselves into the canal to escape their 
agony, and were rescued and driven to the 
hospital. The doctors were almost obliged to 
leave the ward, the scene was so dreadful. But 
Sister Dora, surrounded by cries of “ Oh, come 
and dress me,” worked rapidly trying to ease 
their pain. For nearly a fortnight she never 
once went to bed. Yet she was all the time 
going from bed to bed, smiling, telling tales 
and drawing the men’s attention from their pain. 
Only two of them lived, but one of these said, 
“ It did you good only to look at her. What 
we felt for her I couldn’t tell you; my tongue 
won’t say it.” 

At last Sister Dora began to feel that some- 
thing was the matter with herself. She told a 
surgeon, and he said that she had a disease 
from which she could never get better. But 
she forbade him to tell anybody, and just went 
on with her work, laughing and joking and 
making people well. At last she could not go 
on any longer. A little house was taken for 
her. And just as the bells were going to ring 


LADY OF DINGY STREETS 109 


in Christmas Day — the birthday of the Great 
Healer Whom she loved and served — Sister 
Dora died. 

Nearly everybody in the town went to her 
funeral; boys who had been cured by her, work- 
men who took off their caps and could not 
stop the tears from rolling down their faces, 
mothers whose children were alive and happy 
because Sister Dora had nursed them. 

The workmen went away then and clubbed 
together to give their hard-earned money to 
make a lovely statue, which is placed in the 
centre of the town. There stands Sister Dora 
in her nurse’s apron, and a roll of lint-bandage 
in her hands, while her gentle eyes and her 
quiet, firm mouth, with just a twinkle of fun 
at the corners, remind the men of to-day — they 
were the boys whom she healed — of that bravest 
heroine and tenderest healer, who gave her life 
to save them. 


IX 

THE GREATHEART OF PAPUA 

Three boys thrust a tarred herring-box into 
the sea from a sandy shore between two rocky 
points up the narrow Loch Fyne, on the rugged 
west coast of Scotland. 

“Look at Jeames,” shouted one to his com- 
panion as the third boy leapt out into the box. 
For a few moments he swayed and rolled in 
his perilous position as the box swung out from 
the shore. 

The boys began to tow him and his box 
through the sea, laughing as they walked along 
the shore pulling at the cord. Snap ! The 
cord had broken and they fell on their faces 
on the sand, still laughing. But when they 
stood up again their smiles died from their 
faces. James was being carried out to sea — 
in a herring-box. 

They shouted, and he vainly tried to pull to 
the shore with his hands as paddles. Then 

there came an answering shout from the little 
no 


GREATHEART OF PAPUA 111 


fishing village of Ardrishaig. A man came 
running down the beach in his great wading- 
boots. But the tide was carrying the boy 
swiftly away, and his herring-box was surely 
filling with water. 

Swiftly the fisherman strode to his boat, 
which hung near the edge of the water. Taking 
an oar, and giving another to the two boys who 
followed, he pulled out in pursuit. They 
reached James just as his box was filling with 
water and sinking with the boy’s weight. They 
rescued him, and he went home to the slate 
cottage where he lived, to be thrashed by his 
mother for nearly drowning himself. 

This boy, James Chalmers, was passionately 
fond of the sea. He was happy if he could 
only get into a boat or on t.o a log or plank of 
wood. Three times he was carried home for 
drowned, but revived again. The more danger- 
ous was the position he was in, the more he 
loved it. 

When James was ten years old he lived up 
at the narrow end of Loch Fyne, where the 
River Aray came rushing, tumbling and roaring 
down to pour into the sea. Standing on the 
bank he saw a schoolmate come rolling down 
in the water, drowning. Rushing to the wooden 
bridge, James threw off his coat and jumped 


112 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


into the water, seizing the boy’s dress as the 
water swept him by. He then slipped down 
the river a little, holding the boy in one arm, 
seized a branch, dragging the boy to the bank, 
whence he was lifted by friends. A few years 
later he was standing on a quay when a child 
fell into the water and was carried down with 
the current. Running along the bank he threw 
off his coat, sprang into the water, swam to 
the child and brought it back to the weeping 
mother. 

A short time after this, when young James 
Chalmers was in Sunday-school, his minister 
took a copy of a magazine from his pocket and 
read a letter from a missionary in Fiji. It 
spoke of cannibalism and the lives of savages. 
It told how the power of the life and teaching 
of Jesus made them stop killing and eating 
one another and start to live clean, strong 
lives. 

The old man, when he had finished reading, 
looked out over his spectacles and said, “ I 
wonder if there is a boy here who will by and 
by bring the Gospel to cannibals.” And 
young James in his heart said, “ I will.” 

James forgot about this very soon. He 
became one of the most powerful skaters and 
swimmers in the district, and a strong football 


GREATHEART OF PAPUA 113 


player. Then one day, while he was listening 
to a man speaking from a platform, he remem- 
bered his old vow to go out to the cannibals. 
He made up his mind to do it. So he went 
to Cheshuat College to learn the things that 
would make him able to face the difficult work. 

He often played jokes on the students there. 
Once, for instance, they were sitting in the 
great hall at their evening meal when the great 
door opened and in shambled a large, brown 
bear, sending out the most awful growls ! The 
bear rushed up to one of the students and 
began to hug him. There was a struggle, and 
they discovered that it was James Chalmers 
in a skin he had borrowed. Often he went 
out on the New River on a raft he made 
— for he went on the water wherever he was, 
and whenever he could find time. And once 
he had to jump into the River Lea and 
save the life of a student who could not 
swim. 

At last, in 1866, the great day came for 
young Chalmers to sail for the distant islands 
of the sea. He got on board the John Wil- 
liams , and sailed for weeks and weeks, till at 
last they sighted an island which Captain Cook 
had called Savage Island when he first dis- 
covered it. But when Chalmers went there it 

H 


114 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


was called Niue, because the people had 
learned from Christ not to be savages. 

It is a lovely island, surrounded by a long 
coral reef just under the water. The great 
rolling breakers of the Pacific come grandly 
in, rise some twenty feet high, curl over and 
crash with the roar of thunder over the reef. 
Outside the reef the sea is thousands of 
fathoms deep, the bottom being far beyond 
the reach of any anchor. Night was falling. 
After a strong wind that had raised a rolling 
sea it fell calm. The surge and swell of the 
Pacific set toward the reef. Three boats were 
dropped and attempted to keep the John 
Williams out at sea. At ten o’clock the white 
surf beating upon the hidden cruel reef could 
be seen through the dense darkness. The pas- 
sengers crowded into the boats. In a few 
moments they heard a fearful crash as the ship 
was lifted on to the reef and furiously battered 
by the waves. 

This would have been enough for most men. 
But Chalmers was always full of joy when in 
danger, and especially on the sea. 

“ During our stay on this island ” (he writes) 
“I nearly lost my life. I was greatly inter- 
ested in the surf swimming, and often watched 
the native lads at it. One day the sea was 


GREATHEART OF PAPUA 115 


particularly big, and I determined whilst bath- 
ing to try and run in on a sea with a plank. 
I got too far out and was sucked back to the 
big boulders, and, the seas washing me about, 
I got much bruised and cut. I can remember 
feeling that all w T as lost, when a great sea caught 
me and threw me on to a boulder, and I felt 
now or never, and with a terrible effort I clung 
to it, and then rising, gave one spring, and 
landed where help could come to me. I was 
picked up and carried to the house. I was in 
bed for several days.” 

From the island of Niue, Chalmers went to 
the island of Rarotonga, where he was to work 
as a missionary for the next ten years. As 
the splendid missionary ship John Williams 
was wrecked, he sailed in the only ship at hand. 
It belonged to a noted pirate named Bully 
Hayes, a desperado who cared for nobody. 
You would not expect him to like a missionary. 
But in young James Chalmers he found a man 
who was even more daring than himself. For 
Chalmers risked his life as a missionary of Jesus 
Christ in more adventures on sea and land, up 
river-creeks and in swamps, than ever did Bully 
Hayes for his own selfish plunder. So this 
fierce pirate in a very few days learned to 
admire Chalmers more than anybody else. And 


116 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


he said when Chalmers left him, “ If only you 
were near me, I should certainly become a new 
man and lead a different life/ > 

As they landed on Rarotonga a native who 
was helping them ashore asked, “ What fellow 
name belong you?” He answered, “Chal- 
mers.” The native shouted the nearest word 
he could: “Tamate.” The name “Tamate” 
was, from that moment, the only one that the 
natives used during the whole of his life. 

On that lovely island in the Pacific Ocean he 
gained a wonderful power over the native 
people. His word became their law. He 
fought their drinking customs, and even had 
the king of the island tried and fined for being 
drunk. He did all this not by force, but by 
the power of his courage and will, and because 
they knew that he did it for their good. But 
he became most terribly angry with the white 
men — the Englishmen — who in spite of the 
laws landed strong drink at night on the shore 
to make money for themselves out of the ruin 
of the people. 

After ten years Chalmers was called to the 
work that he most of all wanted to do. New 
Guinea — which is now called Papua — is the 
largest island in the world. L The fierce in- 
habitants are often cannibals, whose great sport 


GREATHEART OF PAPUA 117 


is head-hunting. In some of their villages 
thousands of human heads may be found. The 
greatest man was the chief who could claim 
most skulls, and the young man was admired 
who wore a human jaw-bone on his arm to 
show he had killed a man. They are finely- 
built men who wear nose-sticks, earrings, neck- 
laces, feathers, tattooing and paint, but no 
clothes. [They often live in houses on stilts — 
wood houses built on the stems of trees driven 
into the bottom of a lake. All their weapons 
and tools are of stone and wood, for they do 
not know how to make iron. 

Where no white man has been they have 
no idea of a God of love, but only of angry 
spirits who fly about in the night killing people 
and spoiling their homes. 

To thousands of these savages Chalmers 
was the first white man that they had ever seen. 
They admired his strong nose especially, and 
ran away when he began to take off his boots. 
They thought he was taking himself to pieces. 
Nearly every week of his twenty years there he 
was in danger of his life. For he was never 
satisfied to stay among the savages whom he 
knew, but would go exploring in rivers and 
creeks where no European had ever been 
before. 


118 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


They would meet him as he approached a 
village, shaking their spears and clubs and 
holding their bows and arrows ready to shoot. 
A single glimmer of fear on his face would 
have meant death, certain and immediate. But 
he would hold up one hand in the air to show 
he had no fighting weapons, and would smile 
and laugh on them all, calling out their word 
for peace. 

His power over them was wonderful. He 
went, for instance, to a very fierce tribe of 
savages whose whole life was occupied in 
plundering and killing weaker tribes. When he 
got there he went straight to the chief and said — 

“You must not again go to Kabadi, and all 
along the coast we must have peace.” That 
simply meant they must give up the whole work 
of their lives. They could have killed him 
easily, for they had great clubs in their hands. 
But when he looked at them they simply said, 
“Yes, you are right, we will not go.” And 
they did not ever go again. So he made peace 
where there had been unending war, and life 
where there had been one long story of horrible 
death. 

His work was not simply in preaching or 
singing hymns. His work was, as he said, “ done 
in bush-clearing, fencing, planting, house- 


GREATHEART OF PAPUA 119 


building, and many other forms of work, 
through fun, play, feasting, travelling, joking, 
laughing . 55 Yet he did much good, for instance, 
by just teaching the savages hymns which they 
could not understand at first. But they loved 
to sing, and gradually the words struck into 
their hearts and minds. 

Imagine, for instance, Chalmers in the moon- 
light on Lawes Bay, and then going round by 
Free Point into Farm Bay. Before them lay 
a great rolling line of mountains. Nearer was 
the clear line of the coast, with the white surf 
breaking upon it in the bright light of the moon. 
On each side of Chalmers's boat was a large 
war-canoe manned by savages. These wild, 
brown, naked men, who had spent their lives 
slaying their brothers, were singing “ Come to 
Jesus 55 and “ I have a Father in the promised 
land . 55 He lived in the houses of these men, 
slept with them around him, and ate out of 
the same dish. 

Sometimes while walking through a village 
with savages in it some strange power would 
make him suddenly turn round just in time 
to wrench from the hand of a savage a club that 
was just being held up ready to crush his skull. 
There was a Power greater than even his own 
daring* 


120 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


A great chief told him in after years that 
again and again he and his fellow-savages had 
made up their minds to murder him and his 
wife. They had set apart some of their fiercest 
men to do the deed. The men had walked 
again and again to the low fence round the 
rough log-house where .Tamate and his wife 
lay, unarmed and asleep. The savages knew 
that, if they killed him, all the other cannibals 
would call them great heroes. Yet as they 
started to climb the fence some mysterious hand 
seemed to hold them back. It was God pro- 
tecting the hero and heroine who were ready 
to lay down their lives for Him. 

What, then, do we think of the way in which 
Mrs. Chalmers lived alone in her mission-house 
when her husband was away — often for weeks 
— seeking some new tribe. She was surrounded 
by cannibals who wanted her chair and clothes, 
and the other things in her home, and who 
would think her a choice dainty in their can- 
nibal feast. Hers was a quiet heroism which 
would have taxed even his daring. 

So in shipwreck and peril, through fever and 
loss, through swamp and up river and creek he 
passed for over a score of years, facing death 
daily without boasting, yet with a joy in the peril. 
He could face a village of howling savages, 


GREATHEART OF PAPUA 121 


yet he would patiently teach a school of brown 
infants. With his flashing eyes, his trumpet 
voice, his splendid shock of grey hair, his broad 
shoulders and strong hands, he was truly — as 
Robert Louis Stevenson called him — “the 
Greatheart of New Guinea.” 

At last a day came when, sick and ill with 
fever, soon after his wife had died, he saw 
a great crowd of natives come off in canoes 
and crowd the decks of his boat, the Niuh, 
till there was no room to move. The canoes 
were filled with bows and arrows, clubs, bamboo 
knives and spears. The savages refused to 
leave the Niue , so Chalmers decided to go 
on shore in the whale-boat. Half of the natives 
followed him. A friend, another missionary, 
named Tomkins, whose mother is still alive 
in England, would insist on going with him. 
It was April 8, 1901. They were never 
seen again. They entered one of the “long 
houses ” built by the savages. At a signal both 
of them were knocked on the head from behind 
with stone clubs. Their heads were cut off and 
their bodies eaten. 

It was terrible, but Chalmers had faced 
it a thousand times. It was horrible, yet it 
was a glorious crown of martyrdom to the 
pathfinder of Papua, who had led men all his 


122 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


life out of hideous savagery into purity and 
light. 

Here is the glorious claim that he made some 
years before he died — 

“Recall the twenty-one years, give me back all 
its experience, give me its shipwrecks, give me its 
standings in the face of death, give it me sur- 
rounded with savages with spears and clubs, give 
it me back again with spears flying about me, with 
the club knocking me to the ground, give it me 
back, and I will still be your missionary.” 

The Greatheart that he was 1 


X 

[THE MAN IN A CORACLE 

Three men strode along a narrow path in a 
green valley between great hills. Behind them 
came a little band of followers. Over their 
left shoulders they could see the sun gradually 
dropping behind the range of rolling, purple 
hills. On their backs they carried enormous 
round skin-covered baskets, as large as them- 
selves. Some water weeds hung limply 
from the bottom of the basket-boats. These 
coracles had carried Columba, Canice and 
Comgall with their friends across the lake that 
lay behind them. The three had then slung 
the coracles over their shoulders till they should 
reach the next lake, the gleam of whose grey 
waters they could now see before them. 

At the lake side, where the tumbling waters 
of the mountain stream splashed their way 
down to lose themselves in the greater water, 
were some wattled huts. As Columba and his 
two friends strode down the path, fierce 

123 


124 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


triumphant shouts came from a band of tawny- 
haired warriors, who were nearing the little 
village by another path. Columba had just 
succeeded in learning from Canice and Corn- 
gall their Pictish tongue, and could make out 
some of the words that were shouted. 

“ It is the blood feud,” he said to his 
companions, and his face looked sad but 
determined. “They have gone out to battle 
and have slain many of another clan. To- 
morrow the other clan will attack them in 
revenge. So the strife goes on from father to 
son.” 

By this time the warriors had caught sight 
of the coracle-laden men and had stopped their 
shouting in amazement. For the strangers 
looked different in dress and in the colour of 
their hair from any of their own people. 
Besides, they were not armed. What could it 
mean? 

Steadily the three marched on toward the 
village, holding up one hand as a sign of 
peace. At last the warriors and the walkers 
met as they reached the huts. The men with 
the spears expected the men with the coracles 
to look rather frightened, and to beg that they 
should not be hurt. But Columba had been, 
in his own country, a warlike Prince/ who had 


THE MAN IN A CORACLE 125 


fought many battles. He had looked death 
in the face so often that he was not likely to 
fear it now. 

When the men got quite close to each other 
so that they could see each others’ eyes, it was 
the turn of the ferocious Piets to feel not quite 
comfortable. For Columba looked at them 
with clear eyes that seemed to gaze right into 
their hearts, with an expression that was 
friendly but sad. 

“ Brothers,” said Columba in his wonderful 
ringing voice that had in it the sound of a 
silver clarion, “brothers, I have heard your 
shouts of joy. You have killed enemies. 
You say that your gods of war are glad that 
you have shed blood. I say your gods are 
nothing. There is one God and He is a God 
of love, a Father — and not a God of war. 
You say that you must have ‘an eye for an 
eye and a tooth for a tooth,’ but the One God- 
Father sent His Son to earth, and He said, 
‘ Love your enemies.’ ” 

The fierce warriors knew when they had met 
some one braver than themselves. Some of 
them scowled and gripped their spears tighter. 
But others said to Columba and his friends 
that they must have some food with them and 
stay in their yillage till morning and tell 


126 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


them more of this strange teaching. So they 
stayed. 

It felt strange to Columba to be sitting in 
the little huts of these savage men. For he 
had come from Ireland, which at that time, 
fifteen hundred years ago, had some of the best 
university-monasteries in the world, while 
Columba himself had lived in his home as a 
Prince. His mother was named Princess 
Ethne and his father Prince O’Donnell, and 
he was born in Clartan in rocky Donegal, where 
they had their baby baptized by a young 
minister named Connahan, who became the 
young Prince’s teacher. 

Connahan had invented a way of teaching 
little Columba to read which many boys will 
think was a splendid idea. He had biscuits 
made in the shape of the letters of the alphabet. 
When little Columba had learned a letter he 
ate the biscuit. It is hardly surprising that 
he learnt them quite quickly. When Prince 
Columba grew bigger he went under a more 
clever tutor, called Finnian, head of the 
Clonard Monastery. 

The work that he enjoyed most of all there 
was copying beautiful books. For, of course, 
there was no printing, and all the books were 
written very carefully on parchment or vellum. 


THE MAN IN A CORACLE 127 

which is made from the skins of calves. The 
capital letters and the headings of chapters in 
these books were painted in the most gorgeous 
gold, red, and blue, with such wonderful colours 
that they look to-day as bright as in the hour 
when they were finished. You are even shown 
at Dublin to-day a book which is said to have 
been copied by Columba when at college. 

This book-copying started the most dreadful 
quarrel of Columba' s whole life. For he 
copied a lovely book of the Psalms which was 
lent to him. When the owner found this out 
he was so fiercely angry that he asked the 
King of Ireland to say to whom the new book 
belonged. Columba said, “ It is mine, because 
I wrote it.” The owner said, “ It is mine, 
because it is a copy of mine.” The King put 
his hand to his forehead and looked dreadfully 
wise — though he was really very much puzzled. 
He ordered some huge law books to be dusted 
and brought to him. Then he said this wise 
sentence: “To every cow belongs its calf, so 
to every book belongs its copy.” 

Columba quite lost his temper at this, and 
got all the men who served him to sharpen 
their spears and swords and fight for the book. 
He won in battle, but thousands of men were 
killed. This upset Columba very much when 


128 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


he thought of it quietly, after his temper was 
over. His name means “ Dove/ 5 and he was 
really as tender as a dove, though he was so 
very strong and brave. 

He had a great friend named Molaise, one 
of those people who make you feel that if you 
are in great trouble or disgrace he is the very 
man to go and talk to about it all. Molaise 
was terribly pained with Columba, and said 
how awful it was of him to kill all these men 
just for a few pages of coloured parchment. 
Columba got very red and ashamed. 

“What shall I do to make up for it? 55 he 
asked. 

“ Go away across the sea to the rough fight- 
ing people of Scotland/ 5 said Molaise; “and 
teach them to stop war and to love each other. 55 

The very first thing that Columba did was 
the most difficult. He went to the man against 
whom he had fought and said, “ Please forgive 
me. 55 

Columba loved Ireland very, very deeply. 
Her green valleys and her grey monasteries 
held him tight. But he had made up his mind 
to go to work in Scotland. So the ship was 
prepared and a number of very close friends 
got ready to go to him. They all went in the 
evening to the sea-shore, and there prayed 


THE MAN IN A CORACLE 129 


right through the night. The ship was to sail 
at cock-crow. And Columba found himself 
wishing with all his strength that there might 
not be a cock within sound, or that if there 
were he might have no head. As he was wish- 
ing this the sound was heard of a cock crowing 
before the first glimmer of light came up from 
the east across the sea. A west wind was 
blowing, so the ship was soon bowling over the 
Irish Sea towards the sunrise — and the land 
of the Piets. 

With Columba were twelve disciples, whom 
he called “ my fellow-soldiers.’’ As they neared 
the coast of Scotland they saw a beautiful 
island called Oronsay. “That is the very 
place for us to land,” they said, “and build a 
monastery from which to go out and teach 
the people.” So they put into a little bay and 
went ashore. It was a very hilly island, and 
Columba climbed straight to the top of the 
highest hill. Then he looked west across the 
sea. There, hanging like some dim cloud on 
the farthest edge of the ocean, he could see the 
Irish coast. Columba could not bear it, for he 
was home-sick for Ireland. He came down 
the hill again to the little boat in the bay, 
saying — 

“ We must go farther away, for if I see my 


130 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


native land I shall always be wanting to go 
back there.” 

They put out to sea again and sailed on till 
they reached another island with the beautiful 
name Iona. They took out the axes which 
were in the boat and hewed away at the trees 
till they had cut them down and lopped the 
branches. With these they built wattled huts 
in which to live. Columba 5 s hut was on a spot 
a little higher than the ground where the other 
men had theirs. 

They all worked very hard. In the morn- 
ing one of them would go out with a plough. 
The ground was poor and not very deep, so 
it was not easy to get good vegetables and corn 
out of it. Another man would go down to the 
shore and sail a little way out from the land, 
letting down his net for some fish. A third 
would take the pigs their food and let the cows 
and goats out to graze. 

This work could only be done in spare time, 
for Columba put his learning of the language 
and his preaching first. A narrow strip of sea 
separated the island from a place called Mull, 
and then there was some more sea between 
Mull and the mainland. Columba would cross 
to Mull, talking with the workers while they 
dug in the fields and telling his message to the 


THE MAN IN A CORACLE 131 


fishermen as they looked over their nets, so 
that in quite a short time many of them had 
made up their minds to follow Jesus Christ. 

At last a day came when Columba felt moved 
to a longer journey. So he set out with his 
men in their coracles, paddling and sailing up 
the silver chain of lakes that stretches across 
Scotland in Inverness. Whenever they met 
men by the roadside or stopped for rest in their 
villages, one and another of this little band 
of hero-pilgrims would speak to the people 
to tell them of the joy that would come in their 
lives if they loved instead of fighting one 
another in one weary waste of blood. 

The journey took them many days. Often 
they were tired, but generally they had joy in 
their work, with love of birds and trees and the 
open air, the sound of water rippling against 
the sides of their coracles, with sleep in the 
cool freshness of the night, with waking to see 
the stars fade in the light of the sun. They 
would rise and start again on their travel as 
the white, gleaming mists stole quietly away 
from the waters of the lake. As they paddled 
along they would sing a morning hymn, when 
Columba’s voice would bring echoes from the 
mountains. 

The goal of their journey was the palace of 


132 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


a heathen Pictish king, called King Brude. I 
can always remember his name, for he ought 
to have been called “ King Rude.” He 
slammed the gates of his palace in the face of 
Columba and his men. Columba had no 
weapons. He just stayed outside, spoke to 
the people whom he met, and prayed. Some- 
times the old priests of the gods of war — the 
Druids — would come when Columba started 
speaking, and they would howl and shout so 
that the people should not hear him. But, 
luckily, Columba had one of the finest voices 
that any man on earth ever used. So he would 
raise his voice in a mighty shout that — we are 
told — could be heard more than a mile away. 
This was altogether too much for the poor 
Druids, who put their hands to their ears and 
ran home. 

At last King Brude was so influenced that 
he opened the gates of his palace to Columba, 
and we are told that after many days he decided 
that — like the fishermen and peasants — he too 
would follow Jesus Christ. 

Columba never really stopped having a boy’s 
heart inside him. The story is told of a poor, 
ragged, mischievous, ugly boy who lived in a 
monastery. All the people scolded him till it 
was quite fixed in his mind that he was always 


THE MAN IN A CORACLE 133 


going to be stupid and a nuisance to every- 
body. 

One day Columba was coming to the monas- 
tery. “ Go away and hide your ugly face,” said 
some of the men in the monastery. “ We don't 
want Columba to imagine that we have wretched, 
troublesome boys like you living here.” 

The boy thought that he had been dis- 
obedient so many times that one more scolding 
would not matter. So when Columba, whom 
he had been told was very kind, came to the 
place, he got quietly in among the monks as 
they walked along following Columba and 
singing psalms. Then, with a beating heart, 
he stretched out his hand and touched 
Columba's clothes. 

At once the great, kind hero stopped, caught 
the boy by the shoulder, and swung him round 
so that he could see him. The boy trembled 
all over, especially when the people shouted 
out, “ Send away that naughty boy.” 

“ Be quiet,” said Columba, and it quite 
startled the boy to hear the monks being 
scolded instead of himself. 

“ My son,” said Columba, “open your mouth 
and put out your tongue.” 

Poor Ernan, for that was his name, felt worse 
than you have ever felt when a doctor has 


184 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


looked over his spectacles and said, “Open 
your mouth and put out your tongue.” But 
he took courage from the kind look on 
Columba’s face and put out his tongue. And 
when Columba put out his hand Ernan did not 
shrink away but just stood quite still. By this 
time the wondering monks had stopped saying 
“ Send that naughty boy away.” In perfect 
silence they heard Columba bless the boy’s 
tongue, and then turn round and tell them that 
the boy would become greater than any of 
them, while God would give his tongue the 
power to speak so that men’s hearts would grow 
warm and they would turn into good paths. 

This so much stirred up ugly Ernan that he 
thought, “Well, if Columba thinks that, then 
I will try to do as he says.” The result was 
that he stopped being a nuisance, the monks 
began to like him very much, and he grew up 
one of the splendid saints of Ireland. 

Columba, until he was quite old, loved to 
take a sickle and help in with the harvest or 
dig and plough in the seed-time. And he 
always enjoyed very much the long rambles 
over the heather-covered hills and through the 
bracken and oaks in the valleys, as he went 
from village to village to tell the people to 
love <God and one another. Very many 


THE MAN IN A CORACLE 135 


listened to him and stopped fighting, and, even 
if they broke out into quarrels with one another, 
both sides loved Columba and looked very 
much ashamed when he came and told them 
how naughty it was. But he never said this 
in a superior way, as though he was himself 
good, for he always remembered how hot- 
blooded he was when he was young and how 
he had fought just for a book. 

When his legs grew so old that they could 
no longer carry him to the fields, he lay on his 
simple pallet and prayed for the monks who 
were at work. They used to say that it seemed 
as though his spirit came to meet them on the 
way back from the fields. It made them lose 
all the feeling of utter tiredness, and they would 
walk along quite briskly with lively talk and 
good comradeship. 

At last in the time of harvest they got a cart 
and put Columba up into it. Then he was 
driven to the barn to look in and see the corn. 
He blessed the corn as he had blessed Ernan’s 
tongue. On their way back they stopped and 
rested, for Columba was so old and weak that 
he could hardly bear the jolting of the cart. 

An old white horse that had gone many, many 
journeys and had carried the milk every day 
from the cow-shed to the monastery, happened 


136 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


to come by at that time. It stopped when it 
reached Columba, who had often patted it and 
given it hay. But it had not stopped to be 
patted, for it put its head against Columba’s 
breast, moaning and shedding tears. The 
driver raised his whip to make the old white 
horse go away. But Columba said — 

“ Let it alone, as it is so fond of me, let it 
pour out its grief. God has clearly told it that 
its master is going to leave it.” 

Then Columba blessed the horse, which 
walked away sadly . 1 

So Columba was carried to the top of a small 
hill where he could see all the lands of the 
monastery. He then blessed it and went to 
his small hut. There he took his pen and con- 
tinued the work of which he had been fond all 
his life. He went on copying out the psalms. 
At last he wrote the verse, “ They that seek the 
Lord shall not want any good thing,” and was 
too tired to go on. 

He lay down upon his stone bed to rest, and 
gave his old and loved servant Diormit some 

1 I told this story of the horse to a farmer, asking if he 
thought it could be true. “You see that dog?” he said, 
pointing to his sheep-collie ; “ well, he always knows long 
before anybody else if one of my sheep is going to die. 
He goes up to the sheep and licks its face to show how 
sorry he is. I have never known a sheep live long after he 
has licked its face.” 


THE MAN IN A CORACLE 137 


messages of love. In the middle of the night 
the sound of the monastery bell was heard 
calling them to worship. Columba tottered to 
the chapel and knelt there. His servant held 
him while Columba lifted up his hand in bless- 
ing. His face shone with radiant joy. His 
eyes flashed with happiness. The vision of 
the City had come to him. He sailed across 
the last stretch of life to that gleaming City. 
His coracle touched the golden sand. He had 
found his Quest. 


XI 

* STEEt-TRUE AND BLADB STRAIGHT^ 

In an old, red, American farm-house, called 
Fruitlands, with neither wood for fire nor corn 
for food, a lonely family looked out on rolling 
drifts of snow. It was December in New Eng- 
land. For years the Alcotts had lived in that 
home with other friends. But the friends had 
one by one left them. Their father had won- 
derful ideas of living simply with plain food 
and clothes, and of going to bed at sunset and 
getting up at sunrise. But he did not know 
how to work the farm lands by himself, so 
they were very poor. Their mother knew how 
to make clothes and food for her four children 
out of almost nothing, but she could not make 
them out of simply nothing at all. 

The four daughters, Louisa, Anna, Lizzie 
and May loved the old barn, the shady orchard 
and the rolling meadows. In the field they 
had played at horses and in the wood they had 
been fairies in linen gowns and paper wings. 
But now they were to leave it all. They took 
138 


- STEEL-TRUE ’ 


139 


their last meal of potatoes, bread and water. 
A great sled, with oxen drawing it, came to the 
door. Their few tables and beds were piled 
on the sled. The four girls climbed on to the 
top of this little rick of furniture. The whips 
cracked and, clutching one another for support, 
Louisa, Anna, Lizzie and May went rolling 
along on the sled as it slowly slipped over the 
snow. Behind them, arm in arm, walked father 
and mother. 

Louisa enjoyed it more than the others, be- 
cause she was the “ boy ” of the family. “ I 
was a boy under my bib and tucker,” she once 
said afterwards. She had always liked wan- 
dering off in search of adventure. When she 
was a little mite and they were moving by 
steamer from Philadelphia to Boston, she was 
suddenly missed. A frantic search all over the 
boat failed to find her, till some one went into 
the engine-room, where they found her explain- 
ing that it was “all nice and dirty.” She had 
gone to “see wheels go wound.” At another 
time she ran away and spent the day with some 
Irish children playing on ash-heaps and on the 
open common. Presently her playmates went 
to their homes, but Louisa was “ lost.” It grew 
dark. She saw a big, kind-looking dog on a 
doorstep, so she sat down and, putting her head 


140 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


on his back, went to sleep. She was awakened 
by the sound of a bell and the voice of the 
town-crier shouting the loss of “a little girl 
six years old, in a pink frock, white hat and 
new green shoes.” A small, piping voice came 
from the dark door-step, “ Why, dat’s me ! ” 

Often when her mother called to her, 
Louisa’s voice would come back from the top 
of one of the trees which she was always climb- 
ing, while she would leap over fences and run 
races till all the others were thoroughly tired. 
Excepting her own sisters she would only play 
with girls who were tomboys, and she would 
not play with any boys who were not as good 
as herself at running and jumping. When 
she grew up and wrote books they were just 
bubbling with boys. 

The sisters were very fond of playing 
“ Let’s Pretend.” They had “ Make Believe,” 
“Jack in the Beanstalk” and “Cinderella,” 
and often climbed from the City of Destruction 
in the cellar to the Celestial City in the attic, 
with a special scene from The Pilgrim's Pro- 
gress on each landing. The pilgrims had their 
mother’s piece-bags tied on their backs for 
Christian’s burden, with hats, sticks and rolls 
of paper in proper Bunyan style. 

One great “Let’s Pretend” of theirs was 


‘ STEEL-TRUE " 


141 


“ Brops.” “ The Brop,” Louisa Alcott says, 
“is a winged four-footed animal with a youth- 
ful, merry human face. When it walks the 
earth it grunts, when it soars it gives a shrill 
hoot; occasionally it stands upright and talks 
good English. Its body is usually covered 
with a substance like a shawl, sometimes red, 
sometimes blue, often plaid, and, strange to 
say, they frequently change skins with one 
another. On their heads they have a horn 
very like a stiff, brown-paper lamp-lighter. 
Wings of brown-paper flap from their shoulders 
when they fly; this is never very far from the 
ground, as they usually fall with violence if 
they attempt any lofty flights. They browse 
over the earth, but can sit up and eat like a 
squirrel. Their favourite food is seed-cake; 
apples also are freely taken and sometimes 
raw carrots nibbled when food is scarce. They 
live in dens, where they have a sort of nest, 
much like a clothes-basket, in which the little 
Brops play till their wings are grown. These 
singular animals quarrel at times, and it is on 
these occasions that they burst into human 
speech, call each other names, cry, scold, and 
sometimes tear off horns and skin, declaring 
fiercely that they won’t play.” 

Louisa often had what she called “thinks.” 


142 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


Before the sun was up she would, when still a 
girl, go out over the hills in the summer morn- 
ing. There she would sit in the quiet hush of 
the woods watching through the tree-trunks for 
the glory and crimson glow of the sun rising 
across the hills. Seeing the sun rise to shine 
on the beautiful tree trunks and feeling the 
open-air all round her seemed to help her, when 
she was quite young, to know and love God. 

She began writing a journal before she was 
ten years old. This, for instance, is what she 
wrote on Sept, i, 1843, when she was ten years 
old. 


“ I rose at five and had my bath ; I love 
cold water. Then we had our singing 
lesson with Mr. Lane. After breakfast 
I washed dishes, and ran on the hill till 
nine, and had some thoughts — it was so 
beautiful up there. Did my lessons, wrote 
and spelt and did some sums; and Mr. 
Lane read a story, ‘ The Judicious Father.’ 
. . . Father asked us what was God’s 
noblest work. Anna said men , but I said 
babies. Men are often bad ; babies never 
are. We had a long talk and I felt better 
after it, and cleared up. 

“We had bread and fruit for dinner. I 


4 STEEL-TRUE * 


148 


read and walked and played till supper 
time. We sang in the evening. As I 
went to bed the moon came up very 
brightly and looked at me. I felt sad 
because I have been cross to-day and did 
not mind Mother. I cried and then I felt 
better and said that piece, ‘ I must not 
tease my Mother . 5 I get to sleep saying 
poetry. I know a great deal / 5 

When Louisa and her sisters left Fruitlands 
on the sled, they went to stay with some friends 
through the winter. But in the spring they 
moved again to a place called Concord, where 
some of the loveliest writers of books lived. 
For instance, there was Emerson, who became 
Louisa’s hero and told her what books to read ; 
Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Thoreau, who 
loved being out of doors more than almost 
anybody who ever lived, and has written a 
beautiful book about his life in the woods. 
The book is called Walden . 

They went to school in Emerson’s barn, and 
often he would go with them on an excursion, 
rolling them into a gaily-decorated hay-cart 
which would trundle off to a place where they 
could bathe, play “ Indians,” pick berries and 
have a picnic lunch close to the wooden hut 


144 


THE SPLENDID QUEST 


where Thoreau lived. Thoreau showed them 
the secret places where rare wild flowers grew. 
Sometimes Louisa would walk with him twenty 
miles, and Thoreau showed her every trick of 
the squirrels, the ants and the birds. Or he 
would paddle her along in his canoe like some 
wild Indian, calling the birds around him and 
luring the very fishes to the surface to feed 
out of his hand. 

Thus Louisa Alcott grew up. Some one 
who knew her says, “ She was tall and graceful 
as a deer, her hair was a beautiful glossy chest- 
nut mane, her complexion was clear and full 
of colour, and her blue eyes were deep-set and 
most expressive.” “ I try to keep down 
vanity,” said Louisa herself, “about my long 
hair, my well-shaped head and my good nose.” 

Her father and mother were still very poor, 
and Louisa, when she was twenty-three, started 
out from Concord to Boston to earn her living 
and try to help them. She wanted to earn her 
living by writing stories. But she had no 
money to go on with, and could not wait on the 
chance of her stories being accepted and then 
paid for later. So she hemmed pillow-cases, 
sheets, white neckties and handkerchiefs; 
sometimes sewing on and on all through the 
night so that she could send her mother a 


‘ STEEL-TRUE ’ 


145 


shawl or one of her sisters a new hat. Then 
she rushed home to nurse her sister Lizzie 
through scarlet fever. Yet she managed to 
write a story each month ; one paid the butcher’s 
bill, another put down a new carpet, while a 
third bought a new frock for her sister. 

When her sister was better, Louisa went off 
again to seek her fortune in Boston. “ When I 
set out that day with all my worldly goods in 
the little old trunk and my own earnings in 
my pocket, and much hope and resolution in 
my soul, my heart was very full, and I said to 
the Lord, ‘ Help us all, and keep us for one 
another,’ as I never said it before, while I 
looked back at the dear faces watching me, 
so full of love and faith and hope.” She took 
a little attic room, which was called her “sky 
parlour.” There she sewed, wrote stories and 
taught children, sending home to her mother 
every penny she could spare. Again Louisa 
went home to nurse her sister, who died, and 
to help her mother. 

“I have plans simmering,” she said, “but 
must sweep and dust and wash my dish-pans 
a little longer till I see my way. I can simmer 
novels while I do my housework.” She 
“dreamed toast, talked apple-sauce, thought 
pies and wept cakes.” She “sewed like a 

K 


146 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


steam-engine. 5 ’ The family moved to another 
house. Louisa and her sisters papered and 
painted the rooms with their own hands, laid 
carpets, made and hung curtains, while one of 
them drew the pictures that were to hang on 
the walls. They had games in the evening, 
playing charades and telling “creepy” tales 
over apples and roast chestnuts. 

Soon after Christmas Louisa started to write 
a new novel. She called it Success when 
she started it, but ten years later when it was 
at last published, she simply called it Work. 
It did not get finished at once, for her mother 
fell ill and Louisa shut up her book and started 
nursing. When her mother got better Louisa 
began writing at a mad speed for three weeks, 
not even taking time to get up in the morning 
or have proper meals. The writing-paper 
spread round her in a perfect sea of white 
manuscript. She would nibble an apple and 
scribble her novel day and night, till at last 
her head was dizzy, her legs shaky, and she 
could not sleep, so she threw away her pen, 
put the lid on her inkstand and walked and 
walked till she was better. Then just as she 
was feeling well and wanted to start again, a 
family of girls came to stay with them, and 
Louisa had to lay down her pen and take up 


* STEEL-TRUE 


147 


the stew-pan and washing-up brush, after 
having a good weep in the attic on a plump 
rag-bag. 

Then came the blare of trumpets and the 
tramp of soldiers as the war for freeing the 
slaves began. Ever since a negro boy had 
saved her from drowning as a little girl in the 
Boston Frog Pond, Louisa had been passion- 
ately set on freeing the slaves. She could not 
fight, but she could nurse. She travelled to 
the front. She managed to get some fun out 
of her work. Her first duty was to wash the 
“ dirty, bedraggled heroes , 55 who came in 
wounded. She says — 

“ If the nurse had requested me to shave 
them all, or dance a hornpipe on the stove, I 
should have been less staggered, but to scrub 
some dozen lords of creation at a moment’s 
notice ! However, I drowned my scruples in 
my wash-bowl, clutched my soap manfully, and 
assuming a business-like air, made a dab at the 
first dirty specimen I saw . 55 

When she had been crying her eyes out at 
the death of a soldier in one ward, she would 
run to her room, wash her eyes, smooth her 
hair and dart off to another ward to start the 
soldiers there laughing and joking. 

She was working terribly hard. The doctor 


148 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


saw that she was getting ill and ordered her off 
duty, but she would not go. At last she says, 
“My head felt like a cannon-ball, the walls 
waved, people looked unnaturally big, and the 
very bottles on the mantelpiece appeared to 
dance derisively before my eyes. ... I wished 
I could take off my body and work in my soul.” 

At last she could not stand any longer. She 
went to bed and was so ill that she never really 
got her splendid health back again. She had 
given away her health to the soldiers. And 
the doctors had to cut off her beautiful chestnut 
hair. She wrote some letters for a magazine 
as she was getting better, about her experi- 
ences as a nurse. They thrilled everybody 
who read them. A publisher brought them out 
in book form. Straightway three publishers 
were asking for her work. She sent off another 
book to a publisher, and, just as she was sitting 
on the floor putting down a carpet, she got a 
reply saying that he would publish it at once. 

The next year Louisa was off from 
America to England, Germany, Switzerland 
and Italy, travelling with a gentleman’s invalid 
daughter. The fun and frolic, the sights and 
enjoyments of this trip she crammed into the 
second volume of the book which she wrote 
when she got back to America — Little Women. 


‘ STEEL-TRUE ’ 


149 


Publishers paid her well for her stories now, 
so she gave bonnets and shawls to her mother, 
kept her old home all supplied with good 
things, sending a new dress for her sister at 
home and sleds for her little nephews. When 
she had written Little Women , the publisher 
thought it dull, but published it. It was the 
publisher who was dull. For tens of thousands 
of boys and girls simply leapt at it and cuddled 
it in sofa corners and arm-chairs, laughing over 
the romps and crying at the sad places, writing 
to demand a sequel at once with everybody 
married to the right people. Louisa put her- 
self into Little Women , where she is called 
“Jo,” Mrs. Alcott was “Marmee,” Anna was 
“ Meg,” Lizzie was “ Beth,” May was “ Amy,” 
while “ Laurie ” was a delightful boy whom 
Louisa had met in Switzerland. 

She had worked very, very hard to keep her 
parents and sisters. Her body often ached 
with the effect of the illness that came when 
she was a nurse. She was very tired. So she 
went away to Europe again for a holiday. 
But when she was there the news came that her 
sister’s husband had died, leaving two little 
boys whom Aunt Louisa loved very much. 
There was no money to keep these boys now 
that their father had gone. So Louisa, in the 


150 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


middle of her holiday, sat down and wrote 
and wrote, till she had finished Little Men , 
which she sent off to the publisher. He 
brought out the book and paid her enough 
money to keep the boys in food and clothes 
and send them to school for quite a long time. 
She worked so hard at this and other books in 
order to help others, that at last the thumb of 
her right hand was so cramped that it became 
practically paralyzed. 

Then when she was in the thick of writing 
some splendid story, it would be necessary for 
her to stop in order to nurse a sister or her 
mother. This she always did gladly, but it 
was a terrible strain, for she had never been 
really strong herself since she had nursed the 
soldiers. She had become very famous now, 
and it was difficult for her to get quietness. 
Reporters sat on her garden wall writing about 
her as she picked pears. She wrote loads of 
autographs in ricks of albums. She was nearly 
kissed to death by gushing girls. Then a 
little baby girl was left to her charge by 
Louisa’s sister May, who died at the time when 
the baby was born. So Louisa became a 
mother-aunt to this little niece. The baby was 
born in Europe and had to be brought right 
across the Atlantic Ocean in a great ship. 


‘ STEEL-TRUE ’ 


151 


Louisa waited for it on the quay. “At last 
the captain came, holding in his arms a tiny 
yellow-haired creature, all in white, who looked 
about her with lively blue eyes, and chattered 
in her baby way . 55 

“ I held out my arms to Lulu,” said Miss 
Alcott, “ only being able to say her name. She 
looked at me for a moment, then came to me, 
saying, ‘ Marmar * in a wistful way, resting 
close, as if she had found her own people and 
home at last — as she had, thank Heaven ! 
The little princess was received with tears and 
smiles, and being washed and fed, went quietly 
to sleep in her new bed, while we brooded over 
her.” 

She loved working for her father and the 
baby-girl. But let us take one peep into her 
own sacred, hidden feelings just to understand 
how hard it was to keep on. She writes — 

“ When I had the youth, I had no 
money; now I have the money I have no 
time; and when I get the time, if ever I 
do, I shall have no health to enjoy life. 
I suppose it’s the discipline I need; but 
it’s rather hard to love the things I do 
and see them go by because duty chains 
me to my galley. If I ever come into port 


152 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


with all sail set, that will be reward, per- 
haps. Life always was a puzzle to me 
and gets more mysterious as I go on. I 
shall find it out by and by, and see that 
it’s all right, if I can only keep brave and 
patient to the end 

iW as not she a real heroine of the home ? 

She was, in the words that Robert Louis 
Stevenson wrote of his wife, 

“steel-true and blade straight/’ 

Honour, anger, valour, fire, 

A love that life could never tire. 

Death quench or evil stir, 

The Mighty Master 
Gave to her. 


THE ADVENTURES OF ST. PAUL 


Three times I have been beaten with Roman rods, once 
I have been stoned, three times I have been shipwrecked, 
once for full four and twenty hours I was floating on the 
open sea. I have served Christ by frequent travelling, 
amid dangers in crossing rivers, dangers from robbers, 
dangers from my own countrymen, dangers from the 
Gentiles; dangers in the city, dangers in the desert, 
dangers by sea, dangers from spies in our midst ; with 
labour and toil, with many a sleepless night, in hunger 
and thirst, in frequent fastings, in cold, and with 
insufficient clothing. 

St. Paul (Dr. Weymouth’s Translation ). 

Yea, without cheer of mother or of daughter, 

Yea, without stay of father or of son; 

Lone on the land and homeless on the water, 

Pass I in patience till the work is done. 

F. W. H. Myers’s St. Paul. 


I 

It was night; silent save for the distant 
howl of a jackal or the grunt of a sleeping 
camel. Overhead the bright stars made tiny 
points in the intense darkness of the Eastern 
sky. From a window high up in the wall of 
the city of Damascus some men looked out, 
peering down through the blackness to gauge 
the height of the window from the ground. 

The window opened into a room built in 
the very wall of the city itself. A group of 
men were standing within. “ Here are the rope 
and the basket / 5 one said, pointing to a deep 
wicker basket and a stout rope. 

One of the men, with piercing, deep-set eyes 
and a face of great power and patience, knelt 
down. The others knelt with him, and together 
they prayed to God for Damascus city, for the 
men in it who were trying to kill Paul, and for 
his own safe journeying. The dim lamp was 
put out. Quietly they slung the basket from 
the window and Paul lowered himself into it. 
i55 


156 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


They listened for any sound or sign of enemies, 
but none came. Slowly and carefully they 
let down the basket, foot by foot, while Paul, 
standing in it, held on tightly to the rope with 
his strong hands. At last the rope slackened. 
They began to pull it up. And in a few 
moments they had it safely back in the room. 
They closed the windows, while Paul walked 
rapidly southward through the darkness. 

He was alone, and Damascus was full of 
enemies who wished to take his life. Yet he 
had no fear. He had been brave all through 
his life, but now any little fear that he had 
ever had was cast out. And his mind was very 
full of wonderful thoughts as he strode along, 
and the first gleam of dawn came in the sky 
over his left shoulder. For his whole life had 
been turned upside-down in the last few weeks. 

He had plenty of time for thinking. For 
he was just starting on a long walk into far 
Arabia on purpose to think what he must do 
with all the rest of his life. 

As he walked he thought of the life he had 
lived ever since he could remember. He 
would recall how, as a boy, he had lived far 
away across those mountains to the right of 
him on which the morning sun was now shining. 
He would think of that busy city of Tarsus and 


ADVENTURES OF ST. PAUL 157 


its distant port where Greeks and proud Roman 
soldiers jostled shoulder to shoulder with Jews, 
while shining, crafty Egyptians, black Africans 
and subtle brown Arabian traders bargained 
and bought and sold. He remembered the 
pointed brown sails of the boats, the swaying, 
dizzy masts and the rippling water. 

Tarsus had been his birthplace, where the 
tawny river Cydnus flowed through the flat 
plain down to the Mediterranean Sea. Behind 
the city there stood the Bull Mountain 
(Taurus). He had been generally called Saul 
then, for that was his Jewish name, though 
later he used his Roman name, Paul. His 
father was really a Jew, but he lived in this 
Greek city in Asia Minor and he was a Roman 
citizen. This mixture of Jew, Greek and 
Roman helped Saul when he grew up to be 
wonderfully broad-minded and generous. 

He recalled now that, as a boy, he had not 
gone to school with the Greek or Roman boys, 
but at the Jewish synagogue. Mostly the lessons 
were memory ones. Little Saul had to learn 
very long pieces out of the Law of Moses and 
the history of the Kings. He did this so well 
that he was sent to the College of Masters (or 
Rabbis) at Jerusalem. There he sat at the feet 
of one of the best rabbis that ever lived, whose 


158 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


name was Gamaliel. First Paul became a 
junior and then a senior rabbi, which is some- 
thing like being a B.D., and then a D.D. at 
Oxford University. 

He belonged to a very strictly religious 
people called Pharisees (which means that they 
were “ separate ” from the common sinners). 
They were so strict that they said that you 
must not pick an ear of corn or even pull out 
a grey hair on the Sabbath day, because it was 
a kind of reaping. You might rub your foot 
on the pavement on the Sabbath, but not on 
the earth, as that would be a kind of ploughing. 
So Paul would remember as he walked along 
how he was brought up to believe that people 
who broke any of these or hundreds of other 
hard rules were terribly wicked and ought to 
be punished. But while he was a young rabbi 
another Young Man had been growing up in 
Palestine near Jerusalem, who thought the 
people who said you must keep all these rules 
but forgot to be loving were the most wicked 
people ; more wicked than the rough tax-gatherers 
and the people who were usually called sinners. 
This Young Leader said that the Pharisees 
were wolves in sheep’s clothing, play-acting 
humbugs, and like white-washed graves. You 
can imagine that when Jesus Christ told the 


ADVENTURES OF ST. PAUL 159 


proud superior Pharisees these things to their 
faces they got thoroughly angry, and even more 
so when He also encouraged His followers 
when they plucked ears of corn on the Sab- 
bath and did not wash their hands in the 
particular way that the Pharisees said was 
right. 

When Jesus was crucified, the people who 
followed Him were called Nazarenes or Gali- 
leans, which is like a London man sneering 
at somebody from a village as “a country 
yokel.” These “ Nazarenes ” grew in number 
till the Pharisees became alarmed and started 
putting them in prison or killing them. 

Paul remembered now, with a shudder, how 
he had thought then that God wanted him to 
kill the Nazarenes, and especially how he had 
stood one day while angry men took off their 
cloaks and put them at his feet, so that their 
arms would be free to throw stones at a man 
named Stephen, who was a follower of Jesus. 
Stone after stone they had hurled through the 
air, smiting poor Stephen on the body and then 
on the head, till bleeding and fainting he had 
fallen to the ground and died. As Paul had 
stood there he heard Stephen say two things : 
“Lord, do not blame them for this sin,” and 
“Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” 


160 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


Paul, as he walked on toward the Arabian 
desert, would wring his hands with sorrow that 
he had ever helped these cruel men to kill 
good, heroic Stephen. And he would remem- 
ber how the face of Stephen had seemed to 
haunt him for days after. Paul had always 
been very clever with his brains, and he could 
not help seeing that there must be something 
wonderful that would make a strong man like 
Stephen be so loving to people who threw 
stones at him to kill him. He had begun to 
wonder whether the Nazarenes were not right 
after all. 

So — some weeks before his escape in the 
basket — Paul had been going towards 
Damascus. His conscience was pricking him, 
as the driver’s goad pricked the stubborn ox 
in the plough. Yet he was too proud to give 
in. Suddenly, as he was thinking of Jesus 
being crucified and the wonderful bravery of 
His followers, a Voice and a blazing Light 
stopped him. The Voice said, “ Saul, Saul, 
why do you persecute Me ? ” 

“Who are you, Master?” he asked. 

“I am Jesus, whom you persecute. It is 
hard for you to kick against the goads.” 

“What will you have me to do?” faltered 
poor blinded Paul, as he fell to the earth. 


ADVENTURES OF ST. PAUL 161 


“ Stand up and go into the city, and there it 
shall be told you what you must do.” 

How mad he must have seemed to be to his 
friends in Damascus. He had started there 
to imprison the followers of Jesus; now he 
himself was a follower of Jesus. He was a 
proud rabbi when he had started; now he was 
quite humble and ready to love even those who 
wanted to kill him when they found how he 
had changed. Nor can he have been surprised 
that they should want to kill him when he 
followed Jesus, because he himself had wanted 
to kill Jesus’ followers only a few weeks before. 

II 

These were the recollections of Paul as he 
walked to Arabia. When he reached that 
country he stayed there and thought of all the 
things the followers of Jesus had said to him 
of the life of Christ and of His death. He 
had now made up his mind that all the little 
rules of the Pharisees, even if kept perfectly 
all the time, do not make you really good. He 
saw that God does not ask a man or a boy 
to be good in order that He may love him, but 
that God loves us always because we are His 
children, and that really believing in that 


162 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


Father-love (which Jesus came to show to us) 
makes us good children of the Father. Paul 
now also believed for the first time that black 
and white, slave and free, Jew, Greek, Roman 
and Arabian were all alike the children of God. 

At last when all his quiet thinking was over, 
Paul came back to Damascus to start again 
the adventurous life that began when he was 
let down from the wall in the basket. From 
Damascus he went to Jerusalem and was really 
disappointed when he got there to discover that 
the followers of Jesus found it very difficult to 
believe that he was not just a spy. And the 
Pharisee Jews, who used to say what a splendid 
young man he was, would not listen to him 
now that he had changed his mind. “Very 
well,” said Paul to himself, “ I will be a foreign 
missionary if they will not listen to me at 
home.” So he started out from Jerusalem and 
left Palestine, going first to his native home 
at Tarsus, where it was most difficult to tell his 
old friends that he had become a despised, 
sneered-at Nazarene — a follower of Jesus. 

From Tarsus he went to Antioch, and from 
Antioch to many, many cities in Asia Minor 
and in Greece; he even at last went to Rome 
itself. Sometimes you may have been obliged 
to learn tiresome lists of the difficult names of 


ADVENTURES OF ST. PAUL 163 


the places to which Paul travelled. It is not 
really as important to know those names as it 
is for us to see what a hero Paul was in going 
with his message to the people, in spite of 
being nearly killed again and again. And it 
is really easy to remember the names when 
you think of the wonderful and exciting things 
that happened at each place. 

F or instance, one can always remember 
Antioch, because there the followers of Jesus 
were first nicknamed “ Christians 55 by the 
people who laughed at Paul and his teaching. 
It is difficult now to realize that the name 
Christian, which we are proud of to-day, was 
once a scornful nickname. It was also at 
Antioch that people first decided, under Paul's 
guidance, that you could be a Christian with- 
out going through Jewish ceremonies. Paul was 
the first man to be so broad-minded as this. 

Again, one can remember Lystra, because a 
splendid boy named Timothy lived there with 
his Greek mother, having a beautiful name — 
Eunice, and with his grandmother. This boy 
Timothy would see Paul and his friend Bar- 
nabas at Lystra healing a cripple. Because of 
this the people first worshipped them, but later 
actually threw stones at Paul and left him 
nearly dead because he preached about Jesus 


164 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


to them. Timothy, like any boy who really 
got to know Paul, could not help loving him 
and thinking him the finest of heroes. So later 
on Timothy travelled with Paul to many places, 
being proud to carry his cloak for him. 
Timothy even went into prison to help Paul. 

One day Paul started with his friends, Luke, 
the loving doctor, and Silas, with young 
Timothy, to go farther from home than they 
had ever been before. Paul had dreamed that 
a man from Macedonia in Greece said 
“Come over and help us.” So Paul and his 
friends went down to the sea-shore at Troas, 
hired a ship and sailed away westward over the 
blue water of the ./Egean Sea. Towards even- 
ing they reached a beautiful oval island called 
Samothrace, where they stayed through the 
night, and in the morning they set sail again 
and reached a port called Neapolis. From 
that place they walked quite ten miles along 
the Roman road to the city called Philippi. 

Here Paul and his friends had quite a strange 
adventure. They were going down to the 
water-side to pray with other Jews, when they 
met a slave-girl who used to bring in a great 
deal of money to her owners by telling for- 
tunes. She would keep following Paul and the 
others, shouting out, “ These men are servants 


ADVENTURES OF ST. PAUL 165 


of God and are telling you how to be saved.” 
When she had been calling this out for a very 
long time and making everybody stare and 
some laugh, Paul at last got quite tired of it, 
and turning round commanded the power by 
which she did this to come out of her. 

This made her owners most angry, because 
they saw that she would never earn money for 
them any more. So they caught hold of Paul 
and Silas and dragged them off to the market 
square in the centre of the town, where the 
Justices of the Peace were sitting. The crowd 
did not know much of what it was all about, 
but they could see that this was a chance for 
shouting, and the Philippian boys stopped their 
play to come and shout too. The magistrates 
thought that the simplest way of satisfying the 
people was to have them stripped and whipped 
with rods, and handed them over to the jailer 
to put their feet in the stocks in his prison. 

It sounded very curious at midnight to hear 
Paul and Silas, instead of moaning and groan- 
ing because they had been beaten and put in 
prison, singing happy hymns. Suddenly there 
came an earthquake, which shook the prison 
and broke the stocks that held Paul’s feet. 
The jailer jumped up and was so terrified, 
thinking that he would be killed for letting 


166 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


his prisoners go, that he was just going to kill 
himself to escape the disgrace. But Paul 
shouted to him, “Do no injury to yourself; we 
are all here.” 

“Bring lights,” shouted the jailer, and he 
sprang into the cell and fell trembling at their 
feet, saying, “How can I be saved?” Then 
Paul, who was quite calm and strong in all this 
danger of prison and earthquake, told him to 
make Jesus’ love the one object of his life. 
The jailer began straight away to show that 
love himself, by getting water and washing all 
the blood and dirt from the bruised and beaten 
backs of Paul and Silas. 

At last morning came, and the magistrates 
sent a message that Paul and Silas could go 
free. “No, indeed,” said Paul; “they took 
us, Roman citizens, and without trial they beat 
us and threw us into prison. Let them come 
and fetch us.” 

The magistrates were terribly frightened at 
this. For they would be in awful disgrace if 
the Emperor at Rome heard that they had 
beaten Roman citizens. So they came and 
apologized to Paul and Silas, saying that they 
were very sorry indeed and hoping that they 
would not tell the Emperor, and please would 
they go away from Philippi ? After this Paul 


ADVENTURES OF ST. PAUL 167 


and his friends went round through very many 
Greek cities. 

At one of them called Athens, Paul stood up 
before the learned people of that city and gave 
them a fine speech, which is very good reading. 
Again, in a city by the sea, called Corinth, 
Paul saw all kinds of people from every part 
of the world, with many ships of strange shapes 
and with shining sails. Here Paul joined a 
man named Aquila, who, like himself, was a 
tent-maker. So Paul made tents with his own 
brown, strong fingers. You might be quite sure 
that if you camped out under one of Paul’s 
tents, it would be so well made that no rain 
could beat through it or wind blow it away. 

While he stitched and cut and tied cords to 
make tents, Paul would be thinking what he 
would say when he next preached to the 
Corinthians. J esus, when He was thinking what 
to say to people, would notice the seed of the 
waving corn, the birds in the trees, the flowers 
in the field, and the wind that blew where it 
liked across the mountain. But Paul noticed 
the many things that happened in towns. He 
saw a potter quickly and wonderfully moulding 
the clay into shape, as it whirled round on the 
wheel, and sometimes the potter made a lovely 
vase to hold exquisite lilies, while at another 


168 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


time he made a rough bowl for washing-up. 
“See,” Paul would say, “that is how God 
makes us, one to do special work, another to do 
common work. The only thing that really 
matters is doing the thing that we are made 
for as well as ever we can.” 

Then Paul would go and see the sports at 
Corinth, and he would see men with clenched 
teeth and straining limbs racing round the track 
with hair flying in the wind. 

“The way to race,” said Paul, “is to throw off 
every weight, to train properly and eat only the 
right food, and run so that you are certain of 
winning. 

“These men run like this for a wreath of 
leaves which will wither away. How much 
more ought we to run to the goal, which is 
Jesus, in order to win an everlasting wreath. 
And look,” he would go on, “at the boxer. 
He doesn't wave his arms wildly in the air. 
Just in that way, I hit hard and straight; and 
I box and buffet my own body so that I shall 
be master of it.” 

He stayed for a long time at Corinth, tent- 
making and preaching, and then took the 
journey back again from Corinth across the sea 
to Ephesus and thence to Caesarea, where he 
landed and went along the road to Jerusalem. 


ADVENTURES OF ST. PAUL 169 


III 

Most people, when they had heen beaten and 
imprisoned as Paul had, would say, “Well, that 
is enough. I have done as much as can be 
asked of me.” But Paul was so eager for the 
work and adventure which always come from 
really following Jesus, that he soon started off 
again. 

This time, after visiting quite a number of 
old friends in many towns, he went to a wonder- 
ful city called Ephesus. The most beautiful 
thing in that strange and splendid city was a 
marble temple to a goddess called Diana. 
Paul preached and spoke with such great effect 
that many people who used to worship Diana 
stopped doing so and worshipped Jesus instead. 
Now there were many people in Ephesus who 
earned their living by making little silver 
temples like the great marble ones, and selling 
these temples to worshippers of Diana. One 
of these silversmiths, named Demetrius, utterly 
lost his temper. He went to the other workmen 
and said, “Men, you know that this fellow 
Paul is saying that the things made with our 
hands are not gods at all. He is ruining our 
trade.” The workmen shouted, “ Great is 
Diana of the Ephesians,” and the people 


170 THE SPLENDID QUEST 

rushed out of their shops and houses and 
roared with all their might, though they were 
not quite sure what it was all about. They 
seized two Christians, fellow-travellers with 
Paul, and dragged them to the great open-air 
theatre. Paul thought this was a splendid 
opportunity of speaking to thousands and 
thousands of people, but his friends held him 
back, for they felt sure he would be killed. 

Then the Town Clerk went to the theatre 
and held up his hand after the people had been 
shouting for about two hours. They stopped 
to listen, and he told them, quite frankly, how 
stupid they were to come shouting and making 
a riot like a disorderly mob, when — if anything 
wrong had really been done by the Christians — 
they could bring them before the judge. So 
they all went home feeling that they had been 
rather silly. 

Paul, who was anxious to leave and get to 
Jerusalem in time for the Harvest Thanks- 
giving, spoke to his disciples at Ephesus, and 
later reminded the people that he had earned 
his own living and not taken any money or 
clothes from them. “ Now you, also/’ he said, 
“should work in the same way, helping those 
who are weaker than you, and remembering 
what Jesus said, ‘ It is more blessed to give 


ADVENTURES OF ST. PAUL 171 


than to receive. 5 55 They were strong, grown 
men, but they loved Paul so much that when 
he went away they threw their arms round his 
neck and kissed him and were sorry beyond 
measure that he said they would no longer see 
his face. 

They tore themselves away, set sail, and by 
and by came to Caesarea. Paul was warned 
there that when he reached Jerusalem he would 
be chained and put in prison. His friends said, 
“ Do not go. 55 But he said, “ I am ready not 
only to go and be put in chains at Jerusalem, 
but even to die there for the sake of the Lord 
Jesus. 55 This made them cease from trying to 
stop him. So they got the baggage-cattle 
loaded and went along the road from Caesarea 
to Jerusalem. 

Paul had not been there more than a week 
before some Jews, who had seen him at some 
of the cities in Asia Minor, started to make 
the people in Jerusalem furious with him. They 
clutched hold of his robe and shouted — 

“ Help ! help ! Here is the man who goes 
all over the land speaking to everybody against 
the Jews and the temple and our law. 55 

The people came rushing up in crowds and 
dragged Paul out of the Temple. They were 
just going to kill him, when a Roman with 


172 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


some soldiers came marching up as fast as their 
legs would carry them. This frightened the 
people, who stopped beating Paul. The 
Roman tribune arrested Paul and put two 
chains on him. 

“ What has he done ? ” shouted the Roman. 

Such an awful yell of different accusations 
went up from the frenzied Jews that the tribune 
could not make out what they were saying. As 
they went up the steps to the barracks, Paul 
spoke in Greek to the Roman. 

“Do you know Greek ?” asked the Roman. 
“ Are not you the Egyptian rebel who led four 
thousand cut-throats out into the desert ? ” 

“ I am a Jew, a citizen of a Greek city, 55 said 
Paul, with dignity. “May I speak to the 
people ? 55 

There was some power of heroism in Paul's 
uplifted hand, some gleam of manly bravery 
in his fearless eye that made the howling mob 
be silent when he began to speak. They 
listened in perfect quietness while he told of 
how he had been brought up a Jew, when a 
little boy, and how he had even shed the blood 
of Christians and thrown them into prison. 
They hardly breathed while he said that Jesus 
had come to him in blazing light on the way 
to Damascus, and that he, Paul, had promised 


ADVENTURES OF ST. PAUL 173 


to serve Jesus all his life. But directly Paul 
said that he was told by God to go away from 
the stubborn Jews to nations in far countries, 
they were madly angry again, because they 
thought that the Jews were God’s special 
people and that God did not belong to other 
countries as well. 

“Away with such a fellow from the earth,” 
they all shouted in a frenzy of anger. Then 
they hurled their clothes in the air, and snatch- 
ing up the dust from the ground tried to throw 
it at Paul. 

The tribune made up his mind that he must 
flog Paul to find out the truth, but just as his 
captain had put a strap round Paul and was 
going to begin the beating, Paul calmly asked, 
“ Does the law allow you to flog a Roman 
citizen, and one, too, that is uncondemned ? ” 
This thoroughly frightened the Roman, who 
took off his chains and led him to the Jewish 
judgment place. 

“ Why, I had to buy my citizenship with much 
money,” said the Roman. 

“Yes,” said Paul, “but I was born a 
Roman.” 

While standing before these Jewish judges, 
the High Priest Ananias told the men near 
Paul to smite him on the mouth. Paul 


174 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


answered him angrily, till they told Paul that 
this was the High Priest. Then Paul apolo- 
gized and said he was sorry, and did not point 
out that it was all really the High Priest’s fault. 

Then Paul said something which set the very 
judges themselves into such a hot argument 
with each other that the Roman tribune took 
Paul right away from them back to the bar- 
racks. A young man came and told the Roman 
that forty men had bound themselves not to 
eat food till they had killed Paul. So the 
tribune ordered seventy cavalry soldiers and 
two hundred light infantry to start at nine 
o’clock that night with horses for Paul, so that 
they could bring him safely to Felix, the 
Governor, at Caesarea by the sea-side. When 
the sun had set and all was quiet, the soldiers 
started off through the night with Paul. And 
as he rode on his horse and heard the clank of 
Roman soldiers’ armour around him, Paul real- 
ized that he would never see Jerusalem again. 

Felix, the Roman Governor, could not make 
up his mind about Paul, so he left him in prison 
for about two years. Then Festus succeeded 
Felix, and Festus asked whether Paul was 
willing to go back to Jerusalem to be tried. 
“ No,” said Paul, “ the Jews have no real charge 
against me. I appeal to Caesar — the Emperor 


ADVENTURES OF ST. PAUL 175 


at Rome.” About this time King Agrippa came 
to visit Festus, and said he would like to see 
and hear Paul. 

“To-morrow,” replied Festus, “you shall.” 

So Paul spoke to King Agrippa and told 
him his case. Agrippa said, “This man has 
done nothing wrong. He might have been set 
at liberty if he had not appealed to Caesar.” 

They then got a ship and Paul sailed for 
Rome. They sailed along for some time, not 
very fast, for it was autumn and the weather 
was bad. When they reached a place called 
Fair Havens, Paul told the captain that he 
had better put into harbour for some time. 
But the captain would not listen to this, 
especially as a fine breeze from the south 
sprang up. So having weighed anchor, they 
sailed along the coast of Crete, keeping close 
to the shore. 

Soon the wind began to howl and the clouds 
came over from the north-east The gale 
swept down from the mountains and the ship 
had to be put about. They let her drive under 
the shelter of a little island, near the Syrtis 
quicksands. The storm raged, and to save 
the ship they threw out the furniture. For 
days and nights no sun or star could pierce 
the thick clouds, while the wind screamed 


176 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


through the rigging and the ship pitched and 
rolled. Dimly through the noise one midnight 
they could hear the sound of waves breaking 
on an unknown shore. 

“Throw out the lead/’ shouted the captain. 

“Twenty fathoms of water/’ called the 
sailor, as he did this. Then a minute after, 
“Fifteen fathoms.” 

With frantic speed they threw out four 
anchors from the stern, for in a few moments 
they would have been on the rocks. Paul told 
them not to go off in the boats, and said that 
they must now have a good meal, to be ready 
to work when day broke. It was strange that 
the prisoner should be giving orders and 
advice, but that was because Paul was the only 
man on the whole ship who was not afraid, and 
he was very strong and wise. 

At last the dawn came, all cold and with 
pelting rain. The sailors stood in the bow of 
the boat with their hands over their eyes 
eagerly looking at the shore. “ See,” said one, 
“there is a sandy beach between the rocks.” 
So they cut away the four anchors, hoisted the 
foresail and steered for the beach. Suddenly, 
where the sea met in confused waves, they 
struck the land. The bows would not move; 
the great waves pounded and smashed the 


ADVENTURES OF ST. PAUL 177 


stern to pieces. Those who could swim 
jumped overboard. The rest took planks and 
little rafts, and holding themselves up by these 
were driven ashore. 

The natives of the island rushed down to 
the beach and lighted a fire, in order to dry 
their wet clothes and warm them in the cold 
gale. Paul helped to gather sticks, and was 
throwing some on the fire, when a poisonous 
snake, called a viper, bit him. He shook it off, 
and the people said, “ He must be a murderer, 
for justice will not permit him to live. 5 ' They 
expected to see him fall down dead. But, 
after they had waited to see this and yet no 
harm came to him, they changed their minds 
and decided that he must be a god. 

Three months later the crew and Paul set 
sail in another ship called The Twin Brothers , 
in which at last they reached Rome, where 
Paul often argued with the Jews and the 
Romans telling them about Jesus Christ. He 
lived in his own house. What happened when 
Paul was at last tried, no one knows. All we 
can say is that, whether he was freed or cast 
in prison or even slain, he cared for nothing 
save that he should give to other people the 
Love that had lifted his own life to the high 
heroic Pilgrims’ Way along which he had 


178 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


walked. He had fought his good fight and 
had never been afraid. 

Listen again to the words we read at the 
beginning, and hear the adventures of the great 
hero. 

“ Three times I have been beaten with 
Roman rods, once I have been stoned, three 
times I have been shipwrecked, once for full 
four and twenty hours I was floating on the 
open sea. I have served Christ by frequent 
travelling, amid dangers in crossing rivers, 
dangers from robbers, dangers from my own 
countrymen, dangers from the Gentiles; 
dangers in the city, dangers in the desert, 
dangers by sea, dangers from spies in our 
midst; with labour and toil, with many a sleep- 
less night, in hunger and thirst, in frequent 
fastings, in cold, and with insufficient clothing. 3 ’ 

He had finished and won his race. He had 
found his Quest, 


THE SPLENDID CONQUEST 


My knights are sworn to vows 
Of utter hardihood, utter gentleness, 

And, loving, utter faithfulness in love, 

And uttermost obedience to the King. 

Tennyson. 


M2 


Godfrey de Bouillon, the hero of the First Crusade 
when Jerusalem was captured, was given the government 
of the city. They wished to call him King of Jerusalem. 
But he refused, saying that he would not wear a crown 
of gold in the place where the great King and Hero of 
the World had worn a Crown of Thorns. 


In the very centre, I saw a Cross with a man crucified 
upon it. A name escaped from my lips, “ Jesus!” I 
whispered, half to myself. As I grew accustomed to the 
light, I found that the room was not empty, indeed it was 
the fullest of all ; for the walls seemed to stretch away in 
the distance, and the dome seemed to rise into mist, and 
all the mighty space was filled. Slowly I began to dis- 
tinguish faces. I saw Father Damien, who gave his life 
for the lepers of Molokai; I saw James Chalmers, who 
gave his life for the savages of New Guinea ; I began to 
see quite plainly the multitude that cannot be numbered 
of the Heroes of the Cross. Then I caught the sound of 
music. It came up from the bottom of the huge building, 
as if every kind of hero were joining in one chorus. 
It filled the room in which I stood. I heard the words 
at last — 

41 All the light of sacred story 
Gathers round His head sublime.” 

E. W. Lewis. 


I 


A group of boys gathered quite early in the 
morning at the spring of water that bubbled up 
in an Eastern village. From the white cot- 
tages, as they caught the first gleams of the 
rising sun, there came men and women, some 
bearing bundles and others leading asses. A 
banner was unrolled by an old rabbi and carried 
by some strong young men. Near this banner 
the boys gathered in readiness to start off on 
their eighty-mile walk. At length the signal 
was given and the caravan started. 

Amongst the youngest of the boys was one 
whose mother Mary was riding upon a donkey, 
while her husband Joseph walked alongside. 
The twelve-year-old boy, Jesus, ran along with 
some playmates who were all talking about the 
things that they saw by the roadside. The 
eager party of pilgrims climbed the winding 
path that wound among the hills of Nazareth, 
and then dropped to the plain of Esdraelon. 

“ Look down there at that line of dust/’ said 
a boy. 

i8x 


182 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


“ That is a party of people going to the Feast 
from distant lands — from Asia and from 
Greece/’ said the old rabbi who had travelled 
the road fifty times. “You will see directly.” 

Gradually they came nearer and nearer to 
the old broader road which was alive with 
strange- looking men from many countries, but 
mostly Jews, all going to Jerusalem. The boys 
saw sad-looking, tawny camels walking along 
with dignified, silent step, and they noticed the 
shepherd-boys who neglected their sheep to 
stare at the many-coloured procession. 

At one point boys by the roadside put out 
their tongues and spat on the dust as the pro- 
cession passed along, while some of the older 
boys in the caravan, who might have been 
expected to know better, shouted in derision, 
“Yah, you dogs of Samaritans.” 

As the sun went down every one was walking 
much more slowly, for they were very tired. 
But the boys were eager to search round for 
dry, dead olive and cedar twigs and branches to 
put on the camp-fire which Joseph had lighted. 
But they almost nodded to sleep as they ate 
their crushed dates round the flickering fire. 
Mary and the other women went under the 
shelter of rough huts made rapidly from 
branches, but the boys were proud of sleeping 


THE SPLENDID CONQUEST 183 

out on the ground under the open sky. After 
they had said their evening prayer they looked 
for a few moments at the young crescent moon 
which swung among the stars. But quickly they 
fell asleep. 

Through two long days the caravan of 
Nazareth pilgrims walked the roads that led 
southward to the city, and for two nights they 
camped in the open field. Then on the third 
day, as they had walked with tired feet up a hill, 
there flashed on them, at the top, a vision of 
the great city itself, with its old wall, its Roman 
castles, and — on the Hill — the blazing gold and 
gleaming marble of the Temple itself. 

Going on into the city of Jerusalem they had, 
in spite of the fact that they were footsore, 
crowded to the Temple to give their freewill 
offering, and had gone quietly to their upper 
room to the supper, where there was a slain 
lamb as a sign that you can only save life at 
the cost of life ; bitter herbs to recall how hard 
had been their forefathers 5 slavery in Egypt in 
the olden days, and a paste made of crushed 
fruit and vinegar to remind them of the clay 
used by those fathers when they were slave 
brickmakers in Egypt. 

There were a thousand sights and sounds to 
fascinate the boys on the great days of the 
Feast itself — the shops with their many- 


184 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


coloured goods, over which buyer and seller 
haggled and argued; the new pilgrims coming 
late into the City; the fine robes of the priests; 
the shining brass armour and proud faces of 
Roman soldiers ; the wide terrace where teachers 
with long white beards sat to answer the ques- 
tions of all who cared to come and talk with 
them. These had attracted the boy Jesus more 
than anything else. He had gone to them and 
had asked many questions which had astonished 
the old teachers by the understanding which 
they showed. He quite lost all feeling of the 
passing of time as He went, again and again, to 
learn to find new truth among these teachers. 

Then suddenly He saw the anxious face of 
His mother, Mary, as she came up the steps 
of the Temple and said — 

“Child, why have you done this to us? 
Your father and I have been seeking you 
anxiously.” 

Jesus at once went with them. But He had 
already done what every boy must do sooner 
or later: He had decided what He must do 
with His life. 

“ Did you not know/’ He said gently to His 
mother, “that I must be in my Father’s 
House?” 

The Voice to which He would listen in future 


THE SPLENDID CONQUEST 185 


would always be the voice of our Father who 
is in heaven. 


II 

Eighteen years later a Young Man, in com- 
pany with five younger fishermen, walked two 
by two along the narrow footpath that followed 
where a sacred river ran down to a deep and 
bitter sea. As they talked or hummed a frag- 
ment of one of their country’s songs they 
swung along the path, bearing ever farther and 
farther from the river, and climbing to the right 
along the limestone hills through which the 
waters had cut their way. They were strong 
men with faces tanned by the sun and wind, 
and with hands toughened by the handling of 
cordage and nets — save that One had hands 
hardened by the use of saw and plane and axe. 

They were happy, serious comrades, revel- 
ling in the friendship that bound them to one 
another as they sat on the grass to rest under 
the shade of an olive-tree listening to the voice 
of the Great Companion. Once more they 
were going up to the Feast. They had gone 
up to it again and again since they were boys, 
leaving carpenter’s shop, and boats and nets in 
order to share in the nation’s thanksgiving for 
its distant delivery from the slavery of Egypt. 


186 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


Only a short time before this day, the young 
fishermen had been at work in their boats, fish- 
ing and mending nets on the sunny waters of 
the Lake. It was the work that their fathers 
and grandfathers had done before them. They 
expected that they, too, and their children and 
children’s children, would continue in it. But 
they had met this Young Man, Jesus, and that 
had changed everything. 

They had met Him first of all when they had 
gone down to the Jordan, attracted by the fiery 
revolutionary prophet named John. It was this 
shaggy dweller in the wilderness, dressed in a 
camel-hair loin-cloth, who, stopping in his 
vehement outbursts against the pious Pharisee, 
the proud ruler and the learned scholar, had, 
with an awe and gentleness in his voice that 
they never heard before, pointed to a Figure 
in the crowd who gathered there, and had said, 
“ Behold the Lamb of God.” 

The people turned, expecting to see some 
richly-robed prince come to save them from 
their oppressive rulers. They were amazed. 
For there stood, in simple poverty, yet splen- 
did dignity, the Carpenter from despised 
Nazareth. 

So Andrew and Simon, John, James and 
Philip had come to know Him. Knowing Him, 


THE SPLENDID CONQUEST 187 


they loved and reverenced Him with all the 
hero-worship of their eager hearts. Even so 
He had come to them as they worked in their 
boats near the Garden of Princes, little Beth- 
saida by Capernaum. 

“ Follow me,” He simply said. 

By this time to be with Him had been the 
one thing that they cared about most of all. 
So they had grounded their boats on the beach, 
hung up their nets, and were now walking with 
Him through the hillside paths, lying on the 
grass listening to His words as He sat on some 
boulder under the blue vault of heaven, sleep- 
ing with Him by a camp-fire under the open 
sky, watching the dawn come up over the 
Syrian hills as their Leader came down from 
the mountain where He had spent the night on 
His knees in the presence of His Father. They 
were poorer than ever in money, but they were 
bubbling with happiness and rich in joy. The 
foxes had holes and the birds of the air had 
nests, but this Son of Man had nowhere to lay 
His head, save some stone on a mountain-side. 
Yet to lay their heads on the same hillside in 
the quiet sleep of men who had tired themselves 
in His service was to them a greater joy than to 
be in the courts of Kings or the palaces of 
Emperors. 


188 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


So He walked, a Young Man, among His 
grown comrades. He knew that He had never 
disobeyed the Voice of His Father as He had 
heard it eighteen years back in those Temple 
Courts toward which they were now striding. 
All through the years of silence that lay be- 
tween that first boyish pilgrimage and this day 
when He walked as a man to Jerusalem, He 
had done His Father’s will in 

. . . utter hardihood, utter gentleness, 

And, loving, utter faithfulness in love, 

And uttermost obedience. 

At the bench in the workship, amid the piles 
of shavings, and the ox-yokes and plough- 
handles, 

. . . the Carpenter of Nazareth 
Made common things for God. 

Now as He and His friends entered the city 
and came close to the Temple, His hands 
clenched and His eyes blazed with wrath as 
He heard the chinking of coin and saw the 
steaming cattle herded in the courtyard of His 
Father’s House. Jews had come from all parts 
of the world to this feast. They came from 
the cities of Asia, and even from distant Greece, 
from Ephesus, from Corinth and from Philippi. 
They came with foreign money in their wallets, 


THE SPLENDID CONQUEST 189 

and the noise that Jesus heard was the chink of 
gold and silver as the money-changers ex- 
changed this foreign for Jewish money, bargain- 
ing loudly and threatening poor people the 
while as to how much profit they should 
make. 

On His way up to the city Jesus had heard 
poor peasants saying that they had been saving 
money all through the year to buy a lamb or 
a dove at the Temple, so that they might offer 
it and have their sins — as they thought — wiped 
away by its blood. And He knew that those 
foul and abominable servants of the priests 
were selling to these poor people, for a half- 
sovereign each, doves that had only cost a 
farthing, and were saying, “ You must buy these 
doves or your sins will not be forgiven.” These 
traders were really worse than ordinary robbers, 
for they were not taking just the purses of the 
rich, but the hardly-earned savings of poor 
fishermen and carpenters, shepherds and 
ploughmen. 

It was this that made the Young Carpenter- 
Prophet, Jesus, so terribly angry as He came 
into the courtyard of the Temple and heard the 
oxen lowing, the sheep bleating, the doves 
jumping in terror in their basket-cages, the 
angry bargaining of the traders where as a boy 


190 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


He had surrendered His will to His heavenly 
Father. He was usually gentle, but when He 
saw the poor oppressed and robbed, and heard 
the song of the Temple children and the quiet 
voice of prayer drowned by the noise of a cattle- 
market, His anger burst forth. He took up 
some of the rushes that lay on the floor, twisted 
them into a whip, drove out the cattle and the 
cattle-dealers, overturned the money-changers’ 
tables, and hurried out those that sold doves, 
saying — 

“My Father’s House is called a house of 
prayer, but you have made it a den of brigands.” 

Why did the burly cattle-dealers and the 
wealthy traders fly out in dread before the 
flaming wrath of one Young Man with a few 
twisted rushes in His hand ? It was partly that 
they knew that they were doing wrong. Their 
consciences made cowards of them. But it was 
more because there was in Him a courage that 
did not know the meaning of fear, a splendid 
knightly dignity before which they were 
ashamed, a calm sense of power that came from 
feeling that He was one with His Father who 
has all the power in the wide world in the 
hollow of His hand. 

As the traders hurried from the courtyard 
Jesus heard the hum of gratitude, mingled with 


THE SPLENDID CONQUEST 191 


astonishment, that came from the peasants who 
at last saw this wicked custom swept away 
single-handed by the Peasant-Prophet. He 
turned to His five astounded followers. It was 
still another sign of the utter manliness in Him 
which had drawn these young fishermen to be 
His devoted friends and eager followers. 

Ill 

“ It is splendid to have such a leader,” 
thought the young fishermen. And they won- 
dered if He would arm them and lead the 
people of villages and towns against their cruel 
Roman oppressors. “We could make Him the 
King,” they said to one another. “And He 
would be the greatest King that ever lived, for 
He is as tender and merciful as He is strong 
and just. The people crowd to Him in thou- 
sands, because He can heal them as no one ever 
could in the whole world.” 

So they went out with Him into the white 
stone villages of Galilee and even Samaria. 
Here He healed a boy who had awful attacks 
of fits; there He restored to a widow her only 
son who was dead. He led them farther than 
they had ever been before. He led them over 
the hills where the salt wind swept up from the 


192 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


sea, and through shady glens where waters 
tumbled down to the river. He took them to 
the busy harbour where a thousand masts 
swayed on the rolling ships. There they saw 
brown, lean Egyptians, swarthy Nubians, quick, 
witty Greeks, and stolid Roman soldiers. To 
be with Him was to see adventure at every 
corner of the road. From south to north and 
back again they swept. The country was large. 
He needed helpers to go out in all directions. 
Whom should He choose? He went away from 
the others up into the quiet, deserted hill- 
country. He climbed up by a tumbling, 
gurgling stream, up and up to the shoulder of 
a great hill. There He sat on a ledge of rock 
and looked out over the land that He loved as 
it lay in the light of the moon. 

He prayed to His Father to help Him to 
choose. And He stayed there all through the 
long night till He had settled on exactly the 
right men. 

Yes, there must be Simon, the Rock — that 
impetuous, fiery, loving fisher-youth, Simon; 
and his quieter, strong, steady, reliable brother 
Andrew. Then came the Boanerges brothers, 
nicknamed the Thunderers because in their zeal 
they wanted to bring down fire on a wicked 
townj their names were James and John. With 


THE SPLENDID CONQUEST 193 


them were Philip, one of Jesus’ earliest fol- 
lower-friends, and seven others. 

Accompanied by this splendid band of poor, 
vigorous, loving peasants, Jesus came to where 
a great crowd of people from all over the 
country were waiting for Him. And, looking 
gladly at the Twelve, He said — 

“ Happy are you poor, because the kingdom 
of God is yours. Happy are you who are 
hungry now, for you shall be fed. Happy are 
you who weep, for you shall laugh. Be happy 
when men hate you and insult you. Dance for 
joy, for it is exactly how they treated the 
Prophets. Just love your enemies and forgive 
people who have done evil to you.” 

It was not easy work following Jesus and 
doing what He asked. That was what fascin- 
ated strong men. He called seventy other fol- 
lowers to Him and told them to go out as scouts 
or messengers of His kingdom. They were to 
be pilgrim-knights, poor and brave, not fighting 
with armour, but ready to die for the Kingdom 
rather than be cowards or cruel. 

They were to take a staff, but no bread, no 
knapsack, no money ; they must wear not shoes, 
but sandals, and only one coat. For they were 
on a very urgent work and must not make their 
movements slow with a great deal of baggage. 


194 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


Besides, if a man worked, he at least deserved 
his food. They were not to go to a village 
feeling that they were beggars, but that they 
were taking to the place a wonderful gift. 
They must never be afraid if people threatened 
them, nor be silent just because some powerful 
man said he would kill them if they spoke. 

Jesus called these young heroes to 

. . . utter hardihood, utter gentleness, 

And, loving, utter faithfulness in love, 

And uttermost obedience. 

It was a challenge to their chivalry. All that 
was heroic in them leapt to greet the challenge 
and to live up to the glorious height of His 
appeal. Yet the yoke of the Carpenter-King 
was easy, for He put one end of it upon His 
own shoulders, shared the burden with His 
friends in glorious comradeship. He Himself 
had gone through all He asked of them. So they 
went out two by two through lonely paths and 
crowded streets to teach and to heal. They 
had started on their Splendid Quest — the Quest 
of the Kingdom. 

IV 

One day He was seated, with His followers, 
speaking to a small crowd, when a band of 
Roman soldiers came marching up. They .were 


THE SPLENDID CONQUEST 195 


fierce, strong soldiers, whose whole life and 
training told them to obey orders at all costs. 
They had come, with shining armour and clank- 
ing swords, to take Jesus prisoner. They had 
received their orders to do so from the court 
of justice. When they came to where He was 
they saw a poor roughly-dressed Countryman. 
Around Him were the group of young men 
who followed Him, and some working people 
from the poorer streets of Jerusalem. 

Jesus was speaking. When their captain 
cried “ Halt ! ” the soldiers, moved by some- 
thing wonderful in His gesture and speech, 
stood waiting till He had finished. With gentle 
simplicity and strong dignity He told them of 
His kingdom of Love, where the poor, sinning 
woman, the tired, starving prodigal son, and 
the despised tax-gatherer would come in the 
spirit of little children in tender comradeship 
and holy worship to live beautiful lives full of 
overflowing joy. In that kingdom the children 
would play at weddings and funerals and would 
never quarrel, while all proud anger and crying 
would cease. 

The proud Roman captain bowed his head. 
In quiet, muffled words he said to his soldiers, 
“ Right about turn ! ” So they marched back 
to the court of justice. 


196 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


“Well!” said the judge. “Where is He? 
Have you brought Him ? ” 

“Never man spake like this One,” said the 
Roman captain. 

The judge sneered at him, but he was a brave 
soldier to face the jeers of the judge and the 
court rather than take the defenceless Peasant 
prisoner. 

Some time later, Jesus and His men walked 
along the road, while a crowd followed them, 
and they met some tired poor women, most of 
them holding a baby in one arm and leading a 
little boy with the other. 

One of the mothers came up to a disciple and 
said — 

“We want the Great Physician to bless our 
little ones,” pointing to the babies and the boys. 

“Oh, you mustn’t,” said the angry disciple. 
“ Go away. He is the Messiah. He cannot be 
bothered with little things like this. Besides, 
He is tired.” 

Jesus turned to see what was happening. 
“ You must not forbid them,” He said. “ Suffer 
the little children to come unto Me.” He sat 
down and took a baby upon His knee, while 
His arm was round a boy who stood by His 
side. “Of such as these is the Kingdom of 


THE SPLENDID CONQUEST 197 


Heaven. Whoever does not accept the King- 
dom like one of these will never enter it.” 

Then the tender look went from His face, 
and His mouth looked stern as He said — 

“ Whoever makes one of these least stumble, 
if would be better that a millstone were hung 
on his neck and that he were drowned in the 
depth of the sea.” 

Again the loving look came back to His face 
as He smiled in the faces of the children and 
the disciples and said — 

“But if you welcome little ones like these, 
for My sake, you welcome Me — and in wel- 
coming Me you welcome Him that sent Me.” 

The mothers went home with singing hearts 
to put their children to bed. The Wonderful 
Teacher had blessed them. 

Jesus walked on and on, ever southward 
through the dark night, to face snarling priests 
and cruel soldiers, the scourge, the cruel crown 
of thorns, and the Roman gallows. 

But boys with rosy olive cheeks stirred in 
their sleep on their little couches, and they 
smiled as they prattled in their dreams — 

. . little children . . . come unto Me 
. B the kingdom of heaven.” 


198 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


V 

It is a thing that will make all boys proud 
and glad to remember that in that last week of 
Jesus’ life — amid the treason and cowardice of 
disciples, the brutal mockery of Roman soldiers, 
and the crafty cruelty of priests — the one brave 
sound of praise to Jesus in Jerusalem came from 
boys. It was easy for the people to shout His 
praises in the country roads. It was not easy 
in the very Temple itself, with the priests 
ready to grumble at them, and only waiting for 
an opportunity to kill Jesus Himself. So it 
made His face shine with gladness that the 
boys in the Temple sang out boldly and clearly, 
“ Hosanna, hail, Son of David.” j 

The priests came grumbling to them — 

“ Why don’t You stop those boys making that 
noise ! Do you hear what they are saying ? ” 
“Yes,” answered Jesus firmly, “I do hear. 
Now let me ask, Have you never heard — 
you people who know all the Law — have you 
never heard this : ‘ Out of the mouths of babes 
and sucklings Thou hast made perfect 
praise ’ ? ” 

“Woe to you,” cried the Voice in stern wrath 
and utter condemnation. It was the voice of 


THE SPLENDID CONQUEST 199 


Him who had lovingly welcomed the children. 
Now it was raised in withering scorn that swept 
the hearers before it like autumn leaves before 
a gale. “Woe to you,” cried Jesus, as He 
stood on the terrace of the Temple. “Teachers 
and Pharisees, play-actors, humbugs, you will 
not go into the kingdom, and you will not let 
any one else go in. You whitewashed graves, 
outwardly pure, but inwardly full of rottenness. 
You slaughterers of the prophets whom you 
flog and kill. How can you escape condemna- 
tion ? ” 

For three years they had schemed and 
planned, opposing Him at every point. 
Cowards as they were, they dared not take Him 
prisoner because the people loved Him and 
would defend Him. So with mean tricks and 
spiteful plans, first with soft words and then 
with soldiers, they tried to lead Him to His 
death. 

Now the cruel ring of enemies was closing 
round Him. And from the strong ring of His 
closest friends came the last blow. The priests 
were scheming how to achieve His death. 
They could not do it in the day because they 
were afraid of the people. And Jesus never 
slept the night in a walled city. They must 
take Him by being led to His evening resting- 


200 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


place. As they schemed there came to them a 
man with nervous clutching hands and an evil 
face. It was Judas. 

“ I will lead you to Him at night.” 

“ For how much? ” they asked. 

“For thirty pieces of silver,” he replied, with 
a gleam of greed in his eyes. 

It was the price of a slave. 

That evening Jesus met with His disciples in 
an upper room for the Passover supper. 

When Jesus had washed His own hands He 
came to where His disciples sat. He had 
wound a towel round Himself like a slave. He 
stooped and washed their feet. “ Do to each 
other,” He said, “ as I do to you.” 

Then they sat down, while before them was 
the paste of crushed fruits and vinegar which 
was to recall to their mind the mortar with 
which their forefathers had made bricks in 
Egypt. 

“ The hand of the traitor is even at the supper 
of comrades,” came the voice of Jesus. 

“ Who is it ? ” they cried. 

Jesus whispered to John, who was closest, 
“ It is the one to whom I shall give this bread 
when I have dipped it in the vinegar-paste.” 

In a few moments shuddering, cowering, 


THE SPLENDID CONQUEST 201 


wretched Judas had eaten the sop and gone 
from the supper. Jesus was left with the others 
to tell them to love one another as He had 
loved them, and to remember Him as they took 
bread and wine together when He had gone. 

“ Trouble will come to you,” He said, “in 
the world.” 

And He told them of the Quest for the 
Kingdom of Love. “ Do not be troubled,” He 
said, “for I have wrestled. I have achieved 
the Quest — mine is the Conquest of the World.” 

He and His friends went out into the night 
and into the Garden of Gethsemane. Through 
the darkness came the murky glow of torches 
and the clash of arms. Jesus stood to receive 
the band who approached Him. 

“ Whom do you seek? ” He asked. 

“Jesus of Nazareth,” answered the captain. 

“ I am He.” 

But they shrank back before the majesty of 
His love. Then they recovered themselves, 
and taking Him prisoner, marched with Him 
to Annas’ house, where Jesus was asked some 
questions while the Sanhedrin was hurriedly 
gathered in the night. They then led Him to 
the Hall of Hewn Stone to Caiaphas, the High 
Priest. Jesus there faced the snarling priests 
in the Justice Court of the Sanhedrin with 


202 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


unmoved daring, and in answer to the repeated 
questions of Caiaphas, declared, “ I am the 
Christ.” 

For saying that, they called Him liar and 
blasphemer of God. He stood there in calm 
power, He who had raised the dead and healed 
the sick, while those vile and despicable cads 
who called themselves the servants of God 
spat in His sacred face, blindfolded Him, 
smote Him with their hands and let the vile 
soldiers beat Him with rods, jeering, “ Now, 
prophet, guess who smote thee.” 

To stand there in unbroken dignity and 
kingly power while they broke their strength 
on Him was higher than heroism. 

Dawn began to light in the east, and Jesus 
was led from the palace of the High Priest, 
Caiaphas, to that in which Pontius Pilate, the 
Governor, stayed when in Jerusalem. 

As He walked across, Jesus heard the last 
stuttering curses of His boastful-brave disciple 
Peter, saying, “ I never knew the Man.” 

To the sound of that awful denial the un- 
daunted Jesus passed on to the marble Roman 
hall to look into the cruel, careless face of 
Pilate. At the same time the Sanhedrin priests 
passed out to the Temple Court. There a figure 


THE SPLENDID CONQUEST 203 


of horror met them. A man frenzied and 
haggard, with wild, sleepless, bloodshot eyes. 
He stood before them shrieking — 

“ I have sinned in betraying innocent blood.” 

It was Judas. 

“ What is that to us ? ” sneered the haughty 
priests, drawing their skirts about them and 
passing on. 

With a mad, despairing gesture he hurled the 
thirty clanging pieces of silver on the marble 
floor and fled — out, anywhere, anywhere to 
escape the awful vision of his Great Leader and 
Comrade condemned to the gallows. 

Meanwhile Jesus stood before Pilate. The 
proud Roman governor for once looked into a 
F ace of wondrous dignity that moved even him 
to a touch of awe. 

Pilate looked at the calm face and brave eyes. 

“ Are you the King of the J ews ? ” 

“My kingdom is not of this world / 5 came 
the answer. 

“ Then you are a King . 55 

Pilate led Him out. “ I see no fault in Him/’ 
began the governor. But a howl of dis- 
appointed fury went up, and a shouting of 
accusations. 


204 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


Pilate was perplexed. Then his ear caught 
the word “ Galilee.” 

“Galilee — then He is under Herod’s rule. 
Let Herod judge Him.” 

Before that crafty fox, Herod (the shifty, 
coarse brute who had cut off the head of John 
the Baptist), Jesus stood in a silence that was 
awful in its scorn. 

“ Bring a robe from my old chest,” shouted 
the loathsome King. So they dressed Him up 
as a mock king. But through all the hideous 
revelry and jeering His unbroken courage and 
mighty power shone as with simple strength He 
walked back to Pilate. 

Pilate again declared that he saw no fault 
in Jesus. 

“ Let me scourge Him and release Him.” 

The brutal soldiers took Jesus and bound 
Him. They stripped the mock-royal robe and 
His own simple linen dress from His back. 
Then a brawny soldier, baring his right arm, 
took up a many-thonged whip loaded with balls 
of lead and pieces of sharp bone and brought 
down the cruel lash again and again on His 
bleeding back. 

Again they put Herod’s purple robe on Him; 
on His head they crushed a cruel crown of 


THE SPLENDID CONQUEST 205 

thorns; in His hand they put a reed as mock 
sceptre. They spat in His face and slapped 
His cheeks with their open hands. 

Surely the sight must move the pity of the 
crowd of priests and wastrels as Jesus, still 
erect, but pale, and with His strong tender face 
bruised and His forehead spotted with blood, 
walked out. But no, the cry came from their 
mad throats, “ Crucify Him; crucify Him.” 

“ Then, therefore, Pilate handed Him over 
to them to be crucified.” 

From a pile of gibbets, the soldiers lifted one 
and placed it on His bleeding shoulder to carry 
through the streets and up the Hill. Through 
all the trial Jesus had never flinched. He took 
His cross and carried it to the gate of the city, 
but the cruel thongs of the whip had done their 
work. Fainting under the load, He fell, and 
a Jew from North Africa took up the cross and 
carried it to the top of the Hill. The priests 
were exultant. Only the women and the chil- 
dren wept. In all His suffering Jesus heard 
them, and now He said — 

“Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for 
Me. Weep for these boys and girls of yours, 
and for what they shall suffer.” 


206 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


At the top of the Hill they stripped Him and 
the soldiers snatched His clothes. They laid 
the cross on the earth and Jesus on the cross, 
hammering nails through His outstretched 
hands. Brave to the end, He refused the drug 
that they offered Him; tender to the end, He 
said of His cruel torturers — 

“ Father, forgive them, they know not what 
they do ” 

For six hours He hung in agony. At last 
came the triumph cry, “ It is finished.’’ 

The friends of Jesus buried Him under the 
starry sky and rolled a stone across the mouth 
of the sepulchre. 

Then Peter and his friends, unable to rest, 
fished all night in the lake. 

“ Comrades,” a Voice rang through the mist 
of the morning. “ Have you any fish ? ” 

“ No,” came the answer from the men. 

“ Throw out on the other side.” 

Then it was full of fish. In a flash Peter 
understood and had hurled himself into the 
water. The others followed. It was Jesus who 
had risen from the grave. He had conquered 
even death. There on the beach, like the old 
camping-days, the Comrades sat to breakfast. 


THE SPLENDID CONQUEST 207 


His last words that morning were the first words 
that He had uttered to them on that shore three 
years before: “Follow Me.” 

Later they were together with Him on the 
mountain and He was taken up from their sight. 
He was taken from them. Yet the wondrous 
Hero has never really left His followers. 

Every hero and every heroine in these stories 
of the Quest has known for very truth the 
promise that He made — 

“Where two or three come together in My 
name, there am I.” 

“ I am with you all the days.” 

The heroes and heroines — Galahad, Louis, 
and Joan d*Arc, Peter and Paul, Abraham 
Lincoln and Sister Dora — all followed the 
splendid Quest of the perfect life. Jesus was 
their Quest, for He alone has lived a perfect 
life. They followed along the Pilgrims* Way 
which He had first walked. But they triumphed 
because He — the hero of Heroes — had first 
walked that Way and gained the victory. 

Theirs was the Quest : His was the Splendid 
Conquest. 

“ I have wrestled with the world/* He said, 
“and I have the Conquest/- 


208 THE SPLENDID QUEST 


We can follow the Quest too with Him. 
Where two or three boys or girls walk the 
Pilgrims’ Way, there is our Hero and Saviour, 
Jesus. We shall win — with Him. “This,” 
He said, “ is the Victory over the Worldj even 
your Faith/ 5 


THE END 


Printed in the United States of America. 








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